Living Like a Kite
by chromaticalish
Summary: Santana Lopez is being punished. I suppose when you total the car your parents bought you and get charged with a DUI/MIP, some form of punishment is inevitable. It's just that being shipped off to a conservative boarding school in Germany for your last year of high school seems a little excessive. AU Brittana, other canon pairings.
1. Prologue

Isn't it funny how much your life can change because of one tiny decision? One miniscule moment? Just two seconds, and everything veers off into a completely different direction and you might grow into a totally different person than you otherwise would've been.

Like the lady who instead of putting 37 on her lottery ticket decided on a split second whim that she liked the number 47 better and ended up winning 60 million dollars. Or the dude who decided to go to his 9AM class instead of skipping and on the way ended up helping his future wife pick up the books and papers that burst through her overstuffed tattered bag and scattered onto the hallway floor. Isn't that adorable.

And then you've got me, the teenage fuckup. The girl who was driving to a party when she saw a deer directly in front of her in the road. In that half second she swerved around it to the left, realized there was oncoming traffic, grazed that first guy in the queue of cars before she swerved back to the right, and the grand finale: totaled her car when she came to a full stop against a tree on the side of the road.

The moment I realized those seconds were going to cause my life to make a U-turn wasn't when I looked up through my mess of hair to see my car hood crumpled like tin foil, curled around the tree. It wasn't when I shared a look of shock with one of my bitchy friends in the front seat, half covered by her air bag. Wasn't when I saw the flashing of red and blue lights, or when I blew a .102 on the breathalyzer or even when I was handcuffed and ducked into the police car. It was when my mom bailed me out of jail and didn't say a word to me the rest of the night. It was when I got up at 3AM to go to the bathroom and my parents were _still_ talking in hushed voices, the strip under their door lit. But mostly it was when they sat me down the morning after at breakfast and told me they were sending me to a boarding school in Germany for my senior year.

At first I thought they were joking. Because, I mean, shit like that only happens in movies, right? The rebellious teenager does something that's the _last straw_ and they get shipped off to some foreign land and school to get them whipped up into shape.

But then it was two and a half months later and I was on an international flight to Frankfurt with my parents.

It's not even the 'being shipped off to a boarding school' part that completely changed everything in my life, though. I would've been the same snarky-ass bitch and still have gotten drunk all the time. But instead, I met _her._

And, god, I should've known. I should've been prepared, but I wasn't. And by the time I acknowledged what was going on everything had gone too far and I was in way too deep. I couldn't stop or even slow down_._ I had no control over myself – _she_ had me completely under her spell, and I was so fucking scared. Every glance, every touch, every kiss, every stolen moment pulled the string tighter and tighter until one day it had to snap.

And now she's gone.

...

**AN**: Let's try this again.

I know Brittana is lacking these days but we gotta stick to our ship, yo. I'm really looking forward to getting this up and running. I hope you guys enjoy it too. :)


	2. Punching In a Dream

That's pretty depressing though, isn't it?

Maybe I should start from the beginning.

* * *

**Punching In a Dream** - _Bright lights turn me clean; this is worse than it seems._

(The Naked and Famous)

* * *

After all the griping and groaning and _oh god __please don't leave me here with a bunch of Bible-thumpers,_ there I was. Surrounded by Bible-thumping men and women and little monsters left and right. Half of these kids were being abandoned by their parents within those next few hours, left to whatever devices they had for, I don't know, the next _year_ and they were all smiling and it was just kind of freaking me out. Part of me wanted to scoot in closer to my parents because all the shining smiles and big eyes just felt so damn hostile. But then, I didn't want to show my parents any signs of affection because they were the ones that put me in this mess, damn it.

I mean, according to them, _I _put me in this mess. So clearly the next step from there was to _send me halfway across the planet. _I'm a vindictive bitch and all but even that seems a little excessive.

They kept telling me over and over that I was only hurting myself, and they genuinely believed that coming to this place was going to magically turn me into an upstanding citizen. Like are you fucking serious? There was one thing they didn't seem to realize: the drinking age in Germany is, like, twelve or something. Here, it's not illegal for me to go into a bar and pay for enough booze to get myself completely shit-faced. And that's without my ID. In fact, I doubt they'd even check my ID, because I look fucking older than twelve, don't I? Okay, so the drinking age is actually sixteen for beer and wine and eighteen for hard liquor. I did my research before we came here, okay? Still, the whole 'cleaning myself up' thing? Not gonna work out the way they want it to.

Either way, I'm standing awkwardly in this red brick courtyard outside the school I'll be at for the next year, Christian Academy of Germany. God, even just the fact that I'm going to a school that has the word 'Academy' in the title makes me want to puke all over everyone. Every person here is probably a pretentious asshole.

My parents are a few feet away and have latched onto and are making animated conversation with another man who no doubt is essentially orphaning his child, just as my parents are. I shake my head at their bright conversation, rolling my eyes dramatically.

People eventually start to go inside, and I see a bunch of kids hugging parents goodbye and this whole thing is just kind of gross. I'm tempted to just slip away from my parents unnoticed and let them take that as a 'fuck you for ruining my life.' They'd be on their merry way to merry Morocco to be all philanthropic and selfless and shit and realize that their daughter pretty much hates them. I mean, Jesus. Do they not understand how much time it took - hours and hours of Cheerios practice and being a fierce bitch to everyone to become the most popular and feared girl in school? To get to date the hottest and most popular guy at school? I only have one year to do all of that again here. They don't even have a cheerleading program, for god's sake. Or a football team, for that matter. There is literally nothing for me here except for booze. Which seems kind of counterproductive to what they want me to be doing here.

I am seconds away from walking away from my parents without saying goodbye when they finally finish their conversation with the seriously overly-talkative man that they latched onto and turn to me with optimistic faces. They seem really excited about this whole thing, probably mostly the part where they're _leaving me to die_. I raise an expectant eyebrow at my mom.

"So, Santana, apparently that man's daughter is in the same dorm as you. He said he'd ask her to kind of show you the ropes of the school."

"How kind." I deadpan. My mom gives me a look.

"Be nice." She says warningly.

A beat. "So I guess this is the part where you ditch me, huh?" I say bitterly. My parents almost look like they feel guilty for a fraction of a second.

"Our flight is this afternoon." My dad checks his watch and scratches his nose. "And they don't really want parents lingering around once school actually starts."

"Cool, well I hope you guys have a great year," I bite, "maybe if I survive this hellhole I'll see you on the other side." I turn around and begin walking inside with everyone else when I feel my mom gently grab my arm, pulling me back to face them. I let her.

"You know we're doing this because we love you and we want to see you succeed, right?" I scoff derisively as she says softly, "So please give us a real goodbye because I'm going to be without my baby girl for almost four months." She gives me a long, hard look which I match before I finally lower my eyes in acquiescence. Before I know it I'm being enveloped into a crushing hug, surrounded by both parents on either side. I hug them back, but not _too_ hard. After a little too long I pat each of their backs awkwardly to let them know they really need to let go. I pull away to see my mom's eyes glistening.

"Oh god, mom, please don't." I beg. Oh my god this is so embarrassing.

"You be good, mija." Mom says sternly. "I love you very much." I look around warily and see that almost everyone has gone inside. I roll my eyes just the slightest before mumbling,

"I love you too."

They both give me quick pecks on the forehead. There are only a few other people outside with us that haven't sat down yet or gone to wherever they're supposed to be. My dad nods to all the seniors lined up outside the auditorium. "Looks like they're about to start. Call us tonight to tell us how your first day was, okay?" Yeah, that's not likely.

He smiles and my parents start to walk away.

"Love you!"

"Goodbye, mija!"

They wave, I wave back half-heartedly. They turn their backs to me, and a few seconds later they've turned the corner and they're just gone.

"This is so fucking stupid." I grumble under my breath and turn sharply to walk inside where the other seniors are standing and greeting each other. It's so weird that most of these kids haven't seen each other all summer long. Normal schools in the States go on summer break and it's just a free pass to do whatever you want with all your friends for three months. All of these kids go home to wherever their family is and don't see their friends until they get back. They also get somewhere around fifty new kids every year, while around fifty leave because their parents are going back to the states or elsewhere with reasonable education options. I'm the only new Senior, though. Yesterday they had all the new kids come to the school so we could have a tour or whatever. There were a ton of new Freshman and Sophomores, a few Juniors, and then only one Senior: me. Most parents aren't cruel enough to send their kids to a completely different place for that last year of high school.

I lean against the wall near the middle of the line of Seniors preparing to enter. Apparently what's happening for the opening ceremony is they'll have the Seniors come in from the back with flags, and stand them all up onstage to represent the 'cultural diversity' or whatever of this school. There's a disproportionate number of Asian kids who no doubt fought valiantly for the Chinese flag, but alas, only one can carry it.

Someone slides up next to me. "Hey, you're Santana, right?" I turn to look at a guy with way-too-enthusiastic eyes and an unnecessarily big smile. He's holding up a red flag with a yellow sun in the middle. Also there's too much gel in his hair. Also he looks like he stepped out of the hipster 50's. I nod. He grins. "The only new Senior this year." He says appreciatively, like it's a title. "Usually there's at least two new Seniors. Sorry you're the only one this time around." He smiles sympathetically.

"Yeah."

He leans there awkwardly for a beat before shaking his head. "Sorry, my name is Blaine." He holds out his hand and I take it, shaking it indifferently. "Where are you from?" He asks.

"Ohio."

He shakes his head with a light laugh. "No, I mean where are your parents assigned?"

"Um..." I start confusedly. "Assigned?"

He nods in understanding, "Your parents aren't part of an organization?"

I shake my head uncertainly. "Not that I know of... my dad's a doctor. They decided they wanted to move to Morocco. So I'm here." In reality, my parents decided to move to Morocco because _I'm_ here. But everybody doesn't need to know that whole story.

"Oh! That's so cool. So they're helping with the earthquake victims and stuff?"

I nod, looking around the room. This kid needs to go away. Thankfully, someone near the door to the auditorium calls out to all of us.

"Okay, quiet down, everyone! They're about to start." The room hushes down and all the kids get into a line. Hair Gel pushes off the wall and turns to face me.

"Are you having lunch with anyone today? Wanna have lunch together?" I stare blankly. Whoa, buddy. Not interested. My plan was to scope out the popular kids' table during lunch and announce my hotness there, and I'm almost positive Hair Gel isn't popular kid - he's too short and a little too scrawny to be an athlete. I mean, I guess he's probably considered good-looking but he's seriously overly friendly and it's a little weird that he desperately wants to get with the new kid. But then, I _am_ pretty damn hot, so who wouldn't, right?

I shake my head. "I think I have plans." I say it non-committally, just in case. I give him a mock sad face, which he narrows his eyes slightly at.

"Okay well I'll see you later. Nice to meet you, Santana." He waves and heads to the front of the line with the other flag kids. They open the doors and everyone starts to walk in. I slip into the line with everyone else and enter while they play this god-awful inspirational music. As all the flag kids go onstage to declare their nationality, the non-flag kids go to the section of seats set aside specifically for the Seniors. I'm ushered into a seat between a tall Asian boy and a blonde girl.

As we sit down the girl turns to me with a warm smile. Why is everyone in this place so goddamn happy?

"Santana, right?" she asks. In all seriousness, she may be the prettiest girl I've ever seen in person. Perfectly curled long blonde hair, flawless bone structure, a demure nose, full lips. This is someone I will want to associate with while I'm here.

"That's me." I nod cheekily and shake her hand. "What's your name?"

"Quinn."

"Nice to meet you."

"You too."

As soon as everyone is sat down, a jittery little redheaded woman walks onstage, in front of all the flags the seniors just brought up. She stands at the podium and takes just a little too long to straighten her papers and dust off the podium before she addresses the audience, smiling widely.

"Welcome to Christian Academy of Germany."

A few faint cheers ring through the auditorium.

"Every year at opening ceremony, we have a little tradition where I'll come up here and yell out the names of random countries, and then some random students will stand up and yell back at me."

Quinn and many others in the room chuckle. I notice Quinn holding a booklet labeled CAG H.S. Student Handbook 2013-2014.

"Hey can I see that?" I ask. She hands it to me.

"In all seriousness," the lady on stage continues, "we at CAG are so proud to host such a wide variety of nationalities and be a home away from home for kids whose parents work as missionaries or otherwise in so many amazing places. So, as per the tradition," she does a little curtsy, "I will call out a country, and if your parents are assigned there, or if you hold a passport for that country, please stand up."

A pause.

"Austria." One kid stands up.

"Bahrain." A young girl stands up.

"Brazil." Three or four kids stand up, two of them high-fiving each other.

"Burkina Faso." A blonde girl right in front of me stands up and calls out "YAY-UH!" and sits down as some laughter goes through the auditorium.

"Canada." About twenty people stand up.

"China." Only the boy right next to me stands up, which confuses me because there are tons of Asians in here.

"Czech Republic." A brunette girl behind me stands up and salutes before sitting down.

I start to get bored, so I flip through the handbook. The lady at the podium goes through about fifty countries. The reason only one kid stood up for China is because every single Asian here is Korean, which, you know. I wasn't aware they were allowed out of the country. I stand up and blow a kiss when Morocco comes around and then participate in the giant uproar when United States of America is called out. After that they make the seniors take an oath to be examples and Res life and staff take an oath to do whatever. I'd stopped listening. After some other boring crap, she asks the Student Body President to come up. I'm surprised to see that it's Hair Gel. I'm even more surprised to hear pretty much every person in the auditorium cheering for him as he walks up, with "YEAH BLAINERS" and "YOU DA MAN" and some guys in front of me chanting "HBR, HBR, HBR."

So, maybe I'll want to have lunch with this guy after all.

"Fellow students, faculty and staff." He addresses with a charming smile. "Welcome to year 2013-2014 at CAG!" More cheers and whoops. "As the elected Student Body President it is my honor and duty to..."

Aaand snooze.

Instead of listening, I open the student handbook again and actually look through it. Quinn hovers over my shoulder as I look and I pretend not to be bothered by it. I see an entire section specifically dedicated to the restrictions on relationships.

_**Male/Female Relationships**_

_CAG Students are encouraged to form healthy relationships with the opposite sex based on friendship, respect, and common interests; and to avoid exclusive romantic interests or temporary flirtations. Students are encouraged to develop social relationships that are in keeping with a Biblical understanding of love (1 Cor. 13). Many opportunities are provided for social interactions at BFA within the following guidelines:_

_Students are encouraged to maintain purity in the way they relate to one another physically. Because relationships based primarily on physical affection often lead to impure thoughts and actions, there should be a minimum of physical contact (anything beyond holding hands is not permitted). Displays of affection (including hand holding) during classroom hours and/or during school related activities are not acceptable._

_The following guidelines apply to residence students:_

_Guys and girls may meet together in public areas, such as school, church, CAG residences, or other public spaces within Kandern. Any exception must be by special permission of the local parent, residence parent, or -_

"Jesus fucking christ, is this for real? The school oversees this?" I whisper to Quinn harshly. Immediately her eyes go wide and she looks around as if the Jesus-police itself was about to jump out and arrest us. I notice a couple students nearby turning to look at us while Hair Gel continues on his little monologue.

"Is this _place_ for real?" I mumble to myself.

"We just don't really talk like that here." Quinn says quietly, still eyeing the people around us. "If a teacher heard you, you'd -"

"A teacher's not gonna hear me right now." I interject, motioning to only seventeen-year-olds surrounding us.

She pauses for a moment, in thought. "We just don't talk like that." She shrugs. "That's just how things are here."

"Well, it's weird." I grumble, continuing on through the booklet. Quinn chuckles quietly.

"CAG may be a little stiff and controlling, but it's honestly such an awesome community. I've had so much fun here, and I think you'll really end up liking it here if you -"

"What are you, the school's personal advertising campaign?" I bite as I turn a page. I see her give me that same narrow-eyed look that Hair Gel gave me earlier. She stops talking. I then remember that I'm supposed to be, like, _friends_ with this girl because she's pretty and probably popular. I sigh.

"So no Cheerleading or Football here, huh?"

Quinn snorts. "Yeah, no Cheerleading, and actually," she muses, "people here might say there _is_ a Football team." I pause and raise my eyebrow, waiting for her to finish. "Soccer? Europeans call Soccer Football."

"Well, Europeans are decidedly mentally challenged." I deadpan, flipping another page.

"You know, it actually makes way more sense than a sport where you _carry_ around an object that's a not even round being called football." She says with a little edge. "Just saying. Hand-egg."

"What? Hand-egg?" I ask, wrinkling my nose.

"They should call it hand-egg. You're handling a ball that looks like an egg." She explains exasperatedly, looking at the stage and Blaine and not at me. Way to make friends, Santana. I mean, clearly people here are overly sensitive, but I'm gonna have to fit in somehow.

"Anyway." I sigh again. "So I assume you play Football, then?"

"People don't actually call it Football here."

"So why did you say they do?"

"Because we live in _Europe_ and I was trying to make conversation, Jesus." She freezes after she says it and looks around to see if anyone heard. I snort loudly. She doesn't seem to think it's funny until I notice her trying to hold in her laughter as well. A few people around us give us looks.

"Sorry!" She whispers to onlookers. "Anyway," she chuckles, "Yeah, I play Soccer and Volleyball."

"Two sports, huh? Isn't that kind of a handful?"

"A lot of people are in three." She shrugs.

"Well, shit." I say. She gives me a slight warning look, but I can tell she doesn't care that much.

"You play any sports?"

"I was head cheerleader in highschool." I shrug. "Played Basketball growing up, but otherwise, no."

"Think you'll try out for Volleyball after school?"

I brought workout clothes today, so that's my plan.

"Do you think I should?"

Quinn nods, shrugging, "If you were head cheerleader you must be athletic. Generally if you're naturally athletic you can make it on any varsity team here. I mean, excluding men's teams, obviously."

"Damn, I was really looking forward to playing post for men's varsity Basketball."

Quinn rolls her eyes. "Anyway, you should try out. Being in sports is really good for making friends." She raises an eyebrow at me, clearly telling me _you're gonna need the help_.

I stare at her for a few seconds. "Well thanks for that vote of confidence."

"Anytime."

The next two hours are spent listening to Hair Gel finish his flowery speech about responsibility and honoring God and all kinds of very Bible-thumper-y things, followed by a very long presentation by the Director of the school - who actually turns out to be Quinn's dad - about some historical man and his trials and tribulations and how somehow everything that he did shows us how we as Christians should live our lives and spread God's word and I just don't know how long I can be in this place if this is how everybody talks all the time.

As I sit there not listening, I continue through the handbook and discover that this place is actually completely insane. Some notable highlights include:

_Skirts should not be shorter than 2 inches above the knee and shorts should extend past the fingertips when standing upright._

I look down at my black and green, very tight striped dress and shake my head. This place is going to be so much fun.

_Girls are to wear one-piece or "tankini" style, modest bathing suits._

Yeah that's not happening anytime soon.

_Alcoholic beverages (any kinds of wine, liquor, beer), non-alcoholic beers, tobacco products, or drugs not prescribed by a health care professional, are prohibited._

Also not happening anytime soon. And non-alcoholic beers, are you fucking kidding me?

_Pornographic materials are not to be used, possessed, or distributed in or away from the school or residences. Materials that are not overtly pornographic but which are deemed to be in opposition to Biblical standards will, likewise, not be permitted in the residences. This applies to all secular teen-type magazines and -_

I'm going to die here.

_Students will discuss the choice of movies with their dorm parents. Students and dorm parents will look up the movie together on screenit dot com® and discuss the movie's appropriateness. Once the student has decided to see the movie, he or she will contact his or her own parents and get permission, either written or -_

No but I'm actually going to die here.

Finally, after an indeterminable amount of sitting and not listening to this guy speaking, he tells us it's lunch time. After lunch we'll split into the grades to get our books and lockers and mailboxes assigned and all that.

Quinn and I are walking out of the auditorium with the rest of the crowd when she turns to me, "Wanna eat lunch together?"

What is it with this place and lunch dates?

"I was actually gonna see if Hair Gel wanted to have lunch. He asked me earlier." I'm met with a questioning stare from Quinn. I roll my eyes and explain. "Blaine."

"Oh, right." She nods, chuckling. "He'll probably be having lunch with us too so you can just join us."

"Okay, fine."

We walk outside to a little concrete amphitheater near the tennis court where three people are already sitting eating their lunches. Blaine is one of them, along with a tall girl with long dark hair and Batman sunglasses, and a blonde boy with big lips leaning back in the sun. Seriously, his lips are weirdly big.

"Hey Blaine." I give him my winning smirk as we sit down to join them.

"Santana." He nods amicably.

Quinn gestures to the two others, "Santana, this is Nee," Batman sunglasses girl, "and Sam," lips boy.

They wave.

"Hi."

"'Sup."

"I'm sorry, your name is _Nee_?" The fuck kind of name is that?

"Yeah."

"Seriously? Did your parents hate you?"

Weird-ass-name girl turns to Quinn with an almost amused look that says _and you brought her here why? _Quinn shrugs back with a _she's just whatever, I don't know._ "It's short for Stephanie. My older sister used to call me Nee-Nee when I was a baby and the name just stuck."

I take a bite from my ham and cheese sandwich. "Weird." I say as I chew. "So, I gots to know some things." Swallow. "All that crap in the student handbook? Like how girls have to wear nun swimsuits and dresses have to be a certain length, and we have to check with the school whenever we want to watch a movie or basically live or breathe or do anything." I poke the straw into my Capri-Sonne. "Oh and the non-alcoholic beer restrictions, can't forget that." I take a sip in silence for a moment. "Is that for real?"

Fish lips boy grins and gestures vaguely to me, eyes still closed and leaning back. "I like this one." Quinn is shaking her head with a small smile.

Blaine laughs, "Yeah, I mean it's in the handbook, but it mostly depends on what dorm you're in."

"I'm in Palm." I answer, still sipping my juice.

"Yeah, see that won't be so bad. Some dorm parents are a lot stricter than others. Yours are pretty cool, so they're not going to enforce some of the crazier stuff like calling parents for permission to watch movies. And they haven't cared much about the swimsuit thing for the last couple years. The clothes thing is mostly lax, too."

"Yeah," Lips cuts in as he sits up, laughing, "But if you'd been put in Witt you'd be kinda screwed."

Blaine chuckles as if he's about to disagree, but then sighs, conceding, "Yeah, that's probably true."

"Actually," Lips muses, stroking his chin. "Witt is kind of the 'fight the system' rebel dorm, so maybe you'd fit in perfectly there."

"What type of dorm is Palm?" I ask, genuinely curious.

"Palm is kind of the preppy girly girl dorm." Nee interjects. "Often voted 'owns the most shoes.'"

I nod appreciatively, popping a grape into my mouth. "Sounds like me. So just break all the dorms down for me." I tell them.

Nee sets down her food, wiping her hands, and starts counting on her fingers. "Alright, so Palm is girly, Witt are the oppressed women. Hmm. Blauen is the quiet studious girl dorm. Their dorm parents are strict too. Storch - my dorm - is the best dorm. The Storch ladies are the sportiest, the craziest, and the loudest. We're really loud. Also we do the most streaking and nakedness in general."

I stop chewing and raise a disbelieving eyebrow. Streaking? At a Christian school? I look around at everyone but they're unaffected.

Nee continues, "Maug is the chill, nerdy boy dorm, Sonne is... the kind of dorky, athletic, sometimes weird guy dorm, -"

"Hey!" Lips protests. "I resent that."

Nee looks at him incredulously. "You're seriously gonna try and tell me you're not any of those things?"

A beat.

"That's fair."

"That's what I thought. Liel is the co-ed kids' dorm. And then last but not least," she gestures to Blaine "HBR is -"

"-is the homo dorm!" Someone behind me interrupts with a laugh.

I notice Blaine close his eyes and shake his head with a frustrated look. I turn my head to watch a huge guy walk up the steps to sit next to Sam.

"You're seriously bringing this up on the first day of school? I mean, come on, Karofsky, just because we have community showers doesn't mean we're all gay."

Nee cuts in, "Yeah, I mean it's not like they can help it. I'm actually a little jealous. Storch wants community showers so bad that we just end up turning our single stalls into one and everyone just crams in."

My eyebrows shoot up at that statement while hulking guy begins to mouth 'hot' to a grinning Sam. He's cut off by a hard smack to the shoulder from Nee.

"Don't be gross."

"Fine, I'm sorry." He chuckles, rubbing his arm. "It's not just the community showers, though. Actual gay guys have come out of that place." The guy says it to me so emphatically, it's as if he's trying to convert me to an "HBR is gay" religion.

"It was just one gay guy." Quinn says boredly, peeling at her orange.

"Wait, really? A gay guy came out at a Christian school?" I ask disbelievingly.

Nee rolls her eyes. "We never even found out if he was actually gay. Karofsky and others just made an assumption because he was a little more... effeminate than most guys."

"A little effeminate?" Hulking guy scoffs. "I literally thought he was a chick when I first heard him speak. Plus, the only thing I ever heard him talk about was clothes."

"Anyway," Nee continues, throwing her hand in front of hulk guy's face, "the guy left CAG in the middle of spring semester. He wasn't even here for a full school year and everybody just assumed it was because he was gay." She shrugs at me. "I mean, he did seem super, super gay."

Blaine starts waving his hand as if he were banishing the conversation from his presence. "Can we talk about something else now?"

An awkward silence. Sam takes a very loud, giant chunk out of a green apple with his giant mouth. I bet if he wanted to he could eat the whole thing in one bite. I start to hear the commotion across the lot. People are still hugging and laughing and talking about how awesome their summer breaks were. I scratch my forehead.

"Santana's gonna try out for volleyball." Quinn directs at Nee.

"Dude, yeah! Are you any good? What position are you?"

"Yeah, I've never played Volleyball before. Sorry."

Nee deflates a bit before waving me off. "That doesn't really mean anything." She looks me up and down. "You're not super tall, so you couldn't be a middle blocker. I mean, not that we need one. They already have both me and Britt. Clearly we are superior." She sighs dramatically in mock vanity as she continues. "Quinn's our only good left outside now, we'll need a couple of those. Right outside sucks. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. We also lost our setter last year so that's definitely open." Her thumb and forefinger stroke across her chin as she's in thought. "I dunno, we'll see." She shrugs and steals one of my grapes, popping it into her mouth.

After a while of just sitting, Karofsky and Sam start an argument about who of the Avengers would win in a fight to the death, while Blaine and Nee have begun talking about this year's school play and what they should perform. Nee really wants to do The Importance of Being Earnest _because it's Oscar Wilde, come on!_ Blaine, on the other hand, is dead set on getting the school to let them do Hairspray because _I really want to do a musical before I leave!_ But Nee objects that _they're never going to let someone dress up in drag! _Quinn is sitting off to the side quietly reading a book, and I end up just watching everyone else eat lunch and walk across the lot.

The rest of the day goes by a little faster. Everyone is eager to talk to me and find out about me, probably because I'm the hottest bitch in this place. It's been weird to notice who the popular kids are around here, though. Blaine being one of the popular guys kind of threw me off and it's pretty clear at this point that the people at the top of the social ladder here some combination of nice, funny, attractive and athletic. Which, yeah, I guess that's kind of how it usually is. It's just that there's no fear factor or clear exclusivity. That's completely different to me. Quinn and I were walking to our lockers to put all our books in them when some acne-ridden freshman boy came up to us and asked us if we could tell him where the main office was. If this had been Ohio, I would've made a smart-ass comment and then told the kid to fuck off. Instead, Quinn is all, _oh, it's on the third floor of this building. Do you want us to walk you up there?_ And I'm all _I'm actually going to get diabetes from the sugary goodness of this place._

We end up getting all of our stuff done ahead of schedule, so they let all the seniors out a little early. I have about twenty minutes before everyone else will get out of class and the locker room will flood with Volleyball hopefuls, so I figure I'll just go up to the gym for a bit on my own and, I don't know, do something. Maybe I'll even throw a Basketball around while I wait. I change into my gym clothes: red shorts and a loose cut-off white tee - actually wait, I want to wear the black cut-off - with a neon orange sports bra. Oh, no. My undergarments are showing. I'll probably be expelled now. I put on socks, pull my hair into a ponytail, grab my shoes and run out of the locker room.

The gym is completely empty when I walk in. I'm not even sure I'm supposed to be in here while school is technically still on, but I don't care enough to check. I sit down and lean against the carpeted gym wall right next to the door to the coaches' office when I start to overhear a conversation between two women. One of them sounds like a student and the other sounds a lot older.

I slip my right shoe on.

"Look, Coach Sylvester. I would really love to play this year, honestly. I like Volleyball a lot and I like all my teammates. But my dad told me I needed to just pick two sports... he just can't afford to be paying three-hundred extra euros for a sport I'm not even that good at."

I finish tying the laces on my right shoe and slip on my left.

"Now, nonsense. You're a natural middle hitter. You jump higher than anyone on the court, you're unreasonably flexible to the point where it almost makes me sick, and you have incredible stamina." I finish tying my other shoe and just sit there, leaning against the wall and listening. "Those things alone make you a better player than most of the girls on the team. I can teach any girl how to handle the ball, but I can't teach raw talent."

"I know. I mean, I don't _know,_ but I know that I'd leave a big spot to fill. I mean this really isn't my decision, though. My dad just doesn't have the money right now to let me do three sports this year. I'm really sorry." Silence for a moment. "I saw a tall new Freshman, though! I think her name was Marley. Maybe she'll try out."

"Sit down for a moment."

"But -"

"Sit."

"...Okay."

"Did you bring your gym clothes?"

"No, I -"

"Go borrow some from someone. I want you dressed out and ready by four with everyone else."

"Coach, I'm telling you, I -"

"I'll get this figured out. You just come to practice."

"What are you gonna do about -"

"Go get dressed."

At some point during this conversation my eyes had drifted closed and I could probably have taken a nap if I'd wanted. My eyes snap open when I realize their conversation is over and it's going to look like I've been listening in - which, I mean, I have been - so I shoot up from the wall and am rushing towards the equipment room when I literally run into the voice I was avoiding as she is exiting the office.

(I lose my breath from the impact, just a little bit.)

I clutch her shoulder. "Shit, I'm sorry."

She has my waist. "No you're totally fine."

She steps away from me, smiling widely. She's a few inches taller than me. I've been seeing her around all day since there are only about sixty seniors, and I'm almost positive she's the same girl that stood up when Burkina Faso was called out.

"So you're our new Senior, huh?"

I nod.

"What's your name, again?"

"Santana."

"Santana. Hm, I like that."

I'm not entirely sure how to respond to that.

She sweeps some stray blonde hair from around her blue eyes and holds out her hand for me to shake.

"I'm Brittany. This might sound weird, but do you have, like, extra gym clothes?"

...

**AN**: So my main concern with this chapter is that initial tense change. Did it take you out of the story? Did you notice it? I don't have a beta or even just someone to check with about it, so if it strikes you as weird _at all,_ absolutely please feel free to let me know and I will change it. Also as kind of a sidenote, the school they're at is real – I attended it. I wanted to write Brittana into a place I knew well because I don't have the time to do a bunch of research. But, I still think it's a pretty interesting environment, especially considering the kind of conflicts that will come up because of gayness in general. We'll see how it all goes. :)

I love you all. I hope the rest of your day is wunderbar. Also the page breaks are being assholes.


	3. Your Ex-Lover Is Dead

**Your Ex-Lover Is Dead **- _Live through this and you won't look back._

(Stars)

* * *

You wanna just... borrow clothes from someone you don't know at all?" I look at this girl a little dubiously.

"Well I'm sure I'm gonna get to know you so why does it matter?" She shrugs. "I mean, unless you care, obviously. I totally understand if you don't want me sweating in your clothes. If it makes you feel any better, though, I'd totally let you sweat in my clothes." A pause as she scratches her nose and looks around. "So can I borrow your clothes?"

I laugh with dumbfounded amusement, shaking my head. "You don't even know if I _have_ extra clothes!" She just keeps grinning at me expectantly. "I mean I have another cutoff tee if you want to use that?" I suggest, unable to keep my own big smile off my face.

"That would be super awesome." She starts to make her way past me. "What does your bag look like?"

She wants to run and get it herself. Normally I'd never let someone just look through my stuff, and if anyone ever did it without my permission, some bitch's arm would be lost. The fact that the locker rooms here don't even have any actual lockers does nothing to ease my discomfort about the whole thing. For some reason I trust this girl instantly, though, and barely think about it before I say,

"It's the black bag in the far left corner. I'm pretty sure it's the only bag in there right now, anyway."

She nods, grinning. "Thanks!" I watch her jog out of the gym.

That little smile lingers as I grab a volleyball from the full basket. Aside from in P.E. back in Lima, I'd never really played volleyball before. I remember the basic rules: giant net, don't let the ball touch the ground, no more than three hits at a time and all that. But I'm a little worried that I'm in over my head here. It would be really embarrassing if I didn't even make the team.

I shake my head at myself as I unconsciously dribble the ball to a nearby basketball hoop. _Work on that confidence, Lopez. You're gonna make varsity, blow everyone's mind with your raw talent and totally kick ass._ I shoot, but the weight of the ball is so different than a basketball that I completely miss and it bounces lamely off the backboard. Frustrated, I rebound the ball and take it up for a perfect layup. Rebound again and set up for another shot -

"I know you said you've never played volleyball before," I stop. Nee and Quinn just walked in. Nee continues, "but I figured you'd at least know you're not supposed to do _that._"

"Funny." I say. I keep dribbling.

"Wanna help us set up the nets?" Quinn asks. I raise an eyebrow at her.

"Um, no. Not really." I notice Quinn giving me that narrowed-eye look I've been getting a lot today before I turn back to the hoop and jump shoot. Swoosh.

"Not bad!" Nee calls out. "You're gonna play basketball, right?"

"Probably!" I respond.

"Point guard or wing?"

I shrug as I take the ball to the three point line. "Not sure!" I shoot. Perfect swoosh. "Haven't really played since I was, like, twelve!" I shoot around a little more while Quinn and Nee are popping open the holes in the floor for the nets to lodge into. Eventually more girls start to come in.

"Santana! Come carry one of these poles!" I hear Quinn call from the equipment room. Somehow after knowing me for less than a day, the bitch thinks she can just tell me what to do. I sigh and boot the volleyball across the gym before jogging to the equipment room. I walk in to be greeted by a giant silver pole nearly impaling me. "Jesus, fuck, watch it!"

"Sorry." Quinn sighs, adjusting the pole in her hands. "You know, if you really want to fit in here," she gives me a pointed look that says _and I know you do_, "you can't keep talking like that. There's another pole back there." she nods behind her as she slips past me.

I glare at her form as she leaves the room. Part of me knows that she's totally right and that if I'm going to be the head bitch at this school, I'm going to have to act the part. The other part of me hates taking the advice of not only a perfectly all-American blonde girl, but also my, well, competition. As I haul the giant pole out, I wonder how much of myself I'm going to have to change to fit the whole system. Since Blaine explained that some of the rules aren't really enforced, I wonder what other ones are also lax. I can't imagine that everyone here is virginal, let alone never been kissed before. Also there's no way that every kid here doesn't keep a giant bottle of vodka in his or her room. There's just no way.

I finally finish carrying the big-ass pole over to the hole in the floor that it fits for and slide it in - wanky - without too much trouble. When it settles I glance over to the other pole and see that Brittany is setting up the net to connect her pole to mine. I look her up and down. Along with my cutoff tee, she managed to borrow navy blue cotton shorts like my red ones and even a bright turquoise sports bra. It looks like she couldn't get a hold of a pair of shoes, though. I watch her make her way towards me, unraveling the net.

"Hey there pretty lady." She grins impishly in a deep voice. I can tell that she's quoting something from the way she looks at me expectantly. I shrug at her apologetically. She stops her movements as her face falls dramatically. "Please tell me you've seen She's the Man."

I laugh. "Of course I've seen She's the Man! What kind of person do you think I am?"

"Oh my gosh I was like so worried for a second." She sighs in relief. "I was about to stage an intervention."

"What part of the movie is that even from?" I say, shaking my head.

"What? The part where they're in Cesario's and Andrew tries hitting on Monique? Come on!" I laugh again.

"Well I'm sorry I didn't get the reference because you used a totally unmemorable quote!"

She scoffs. "Nuh-uh, that's totally a memorable quote!"

"Well," I shrug, grinning. "Your impression obviously sucked too much for me to get it." I worry as soon as I say it that maybe it came out a little mean and I don't want to offend her. She laughs, though, as she finally reaches my side, holding the net.

"I've actually gotten really good at impressions, thank you very much. Here, can you pull the net so I can get it in?" I stand behind her and throw my body weight into stretching the net so that Brittany can hook it to the pole. "Thanks."

"Yeah, no problem."

I lean my weight onto my outstretched hand against the pole and watch her raise and tighten the net with a clear practiced ease. As she works, I look down and notice her socks.

"Oh my god, you definitely have unicorns on your socks." I make fun of her, snickering.

She tightens the last rope, then leans against the pole with me, facing me, her hand placed just above mine. "You're totally just jealous and you know it."

"Totally." I grin back. Her blue eyes are sparkling with mirth. She holds my gaze.

"Look at you two twinsies, matching on the first day!" We both turn to see Nee walk up to us as well as a mousy girl with dreadlocks - gross. "Did you plan it?"

I roll my eyes slightly. "I literally just met her a half hour ago."

"Yeah, these aren't even my clothes." Brittany affirms.

"You forgot your clothes on the first day? Already Britt?" Laughs Nee disbelievingly. I narrow my eyes.

Brittany shrugs and grins and after a half hour of knowing this girl I can tell that her smile is fake. I wonder if Nee and her friend are able to tell. "Yeah, well," She knocks her own head jokingly. "You know me."

Dreads girl might be able to tell. She gestures to our outfits. "You guys are like fire and water." She says, changing the subject. I give her a slightly weird look.

"Kristen watched too much Avatar growing up." Explains Nee.

"Oh dude I used to love that show!" Brittany says enthusiastically. "We should have a marathon or something when –"

"LADIES!" My body jumps from surprise and I turn around to see the coach - a very tall, short-haired blonde woman decked in a navy blue tracksuit, yelling through a megaphone. The combination of megaphone and indoors seems unnecessary. It works to make her damn terrifying, though. "START WARMING UP! PEPPER WITH A TEAMMATE!"

"Jesus," I cringe, "is she always like this?"

"Pretty much, yeah." Says Brittany. "Wanna pepper with me?"

"Um, sure?" I say hesitantly.

Brittany explains, "It's like doing pass, set, spike with a partner for as long as you can." I must not look too enthusiastic about it so she remedies, "We can just pass."

Yeah, so I might suck at volleyball. My forearms burn with every pass, and I've discovered that I can't spike a ball worth shit. I'm an okay passer, so they basically kicked me out of the hitting lines by asking me to try setting. If I make the team I'll probably be the setter. Serving is a bitch, too. I'm looking around at some of the serves going over the net, and I swear to god some of them are deadly. Like they could legitimately kill someone. Brittany and Nee are two girls in particular that should be placed on a watch list for people who could potentially commit accidental homicide. When they serve it's like temperamental bullets. When I serve it's like someone tossing a giant turd over the net. Even this little Freshman blonde next to me manages a nice-looking serve. I sigh in frustration. The coach passes me with a clipboard and a scrutinizing eye as I lob another turd that doesn't even reach the net. She's been walking around the gym since the start of tryouts, assessing all the potential players. Suddenly, she whips out the megaphone.

"LADIES, A REMINDER!" Everyone pauses to give the coach their attention. "I DO NOT ACCEPT SENIORS AS JUNIOR VARSITY PLAYERS! IF YOU ARE A SENIOR AND YOU DO NOT MAKE VARSITY, YOU WILL BE CUT!" A pause. "CONTINUE!"

Fuck, I'm screwed.

* * *

So back in Ohio, I was head cheerleader, right? I have no shortage of experience with locker rooms and occasionally accidentally seeing other girls in various states of undress. That's fine. Generally when girls are in locker rooms together they change quickly, avoiding eye contact while awkwardly trying not to flash everyone as they change. Newest discovery? That is definitely _not_ how things work here. When I walk into the locker room after tryouts, some girls are stripping completely down while still having conversations and laughing and interacting and Nee just slipped past me almost bare-ass naked like that's totally a normal thing and _how is this not awkward for you people?_ It doesn't really make sense to me - if this is a conservative, Christian school, you'd think that they'd want to shield the students from any and all nakedness because obviously naked bodies and anything sexual is the devil's breakfast. But no. I'm in the women's locker room, trying to maintain some semblance of modesty as I change back into my regular clothes, and girls all around me are just marching around completely topless and socializing as if, sure, everyone does that, right?

Brittany does that, apparently.

"Santana!" She calls to me from across the locker room. And she's walking towards my corner of the locker room, holding my cutoff tee, decidedly completely bra-less and looking me right in the eye. I mean they're just right _there_ and nobody bats an eyelash about it. I struggle to keep eye contact with her, and I can feel my face and ears get hot. Thank god I'm Hispanic and no one can tell.

"Thanks." She smiles at me, handing me the folded shirt. "I tried extra hard not to sweat, just for you."

My whole body is tense. "No problem. I appreciate the lack of sweat." I grin shakily, accidentally glancing down, boobs. I'm trying to come across as if this whole thing doesn't bother me, because clearly everyone else is fine about it. Her eyes linger on me just a second too long. (She can tell, she can tell.)

Brittany steps away from me; I release a breath I didn't realize I was holding.

When I finish discreetly changing, I go to the sinks near the door, straightening my hair out, fixing my makeup. Dreads is the only other girl left in the locker room and she comes out to join me, fixing her own hair and _honey a little finger brushing isn't gonna fix that nasty creature perched on your head._

"You get used to it, you know." She says to me, not looking away from her own reflection.

I stop applying my lip gloss and turn to her. "What?"

"Everyone being naked all the time. You get used to it. When I first joined sports I thought it was real fuckin' weird." My eyebrows shoot up. "But you get used to it and stop caring eventually."

"Um, thanks..." I say.

"Yeah. See you tomorrow." She waves at me, smiling as she walks out of the locker room. I'm not sure if what she said made me feel better or not, because a part of me wonders if that's something I could ever really get used to.

Regardless, I put my best hot bitch face on and leave the locker room. The vans for each dorm are here - they cook food in mass amounts here at the school kitchen and send portions to each dorm for dinner every school night, and usually the sports kids just hitch a ride with their respective food vans since practice gets out after the late bus is already gone. At least that's what I've been told, I don't know. It's just my first day. Quinn is sitting on one of the benches outside talking to Brittany, so I go over and join them, sitting next to Quinn.

"So, uh." I rub the back of my neck, feeling uncharacteristically timid. "How did I do? Think I can make the team?"

Quinn and Brittany exchange looks and I start to wish I hadn't even asked, when -

"Yeah. I think you will."

"Wait, really? You do?"

Quinn continues, "Yeah, I mean you're kind of terrible at hitting and serving. You actually really suck at those things, sorry."

"I thought you were supposed to be encouraging me here -"

"But," Brittany cuts in, "You're super fast and you're not afraid to hustle or dive for the ball. You weren't even wearing kneepads and you were, like, killing yourself trying to keep the ball up. Coach is gonna notice stuff like that. You're okay at setting, and we lost our main setter last year, so..." She shrugs. "Yeah, I think you'll make it."

I grin. "Fuck yeah!" Quinn smacks my arm. "Jesus Christ, I'm trying, okay?" She smacks me again. Brittany laughs.

"You'll get used to it." She says as she stands up and shoulders her bags. _Yeah, among other things,_ I scoff inwardly. Brittany sighs and turns toward Quinn and I sitting on the bench. "I'll see you guys tomorrow. Santana, it was really nice to meet you." She smiles at me.

I give her a genuine smile back. "Yeah, you too."

Brittany walks away to her own van and helps her RA load the containers of food. Her van is the first to leave.

"What dorm is Brittany in?" I ask Quinn.

"She's in Storch. Sporty naked girl dorm. Same as Nee." She replies. Well, that explains a few things, I suppose.

"Wait, what dorm are you in?"

"I'm not in a dorm, remember? My dad is the director of the school."

"Right. Forgot. Wait so why are you waiting for the vans?"

"I live on the way to Palm, so I usually catch a ride with you guys if I can."

"Why aren't they here yet?"

Quinn shrugs. We sit in silence for a moment before she turns to look at me. "Seriously, though, what do you think? About CAG?"

"You want me to be serious?" I say. Quinn nods. "Well I seriously believe that people here are bat-shit crazy, and way too nice for their own good." The thing is, I _am_ being serious, but Quinn just laughs.

"You'll get used to it."

"Why the fuck does everybody keep saying that?"

"Because it's true? Coming to CAG is like..." She ponders for a moment. "Is like being in a really bad mood when there's a box of kittens nearby. You know? Like, you can't help but... wait that's not what I mean."

"Don't hurt yourself."

"Shut up. It's just... I mean the environment is contagious, you know? After a little while you can't really help but get into the groove with everyone else."

"Right."

The Palm van finally pulls into the lot. "Just wait. After a week, you're gonna stop swearing, you're gonna start being naked like everyone else, and you're gonna be so nice that you won't even recognize yourself."

"Well fuck that happening." I say. I'd sooner throw myself off a building than let any of that happen to me. Popularity be damned.

We both grab our bags and walk to the van.

"Okay." She says, grimacing a little. "Maybe a longer than a week."

We drop off Quinn and get back to the dorm and since it's the first day of school and there hasn't been any homework or anything, our dorm staff has taken it upon themselves to make sure that every single person hates each other by the end of the night. This is ensured because literally the first thing they make us do after dinner is, of course, play the dreaded human knot. You know, that game where you get way up close and personal with people who you would otherwise have no desire to even be in close proximity to, much less hold hands with and occasionally accidentally grope. I give a girl near me a dirty look for brushing her elbow against my left boob. She looks at me apologetically.

After like what seems like an hour of struggling and body odor and _get your fucking armpit away from my face,_ we all manage to completely suck at this stupid game and not get ourselves untangled. Eventually our dorm staff takes pity on us and frees us.

"Oh thank god." I sigh and let go of two disgusting, sweaty hands, wiping my own hastily on my sides.

"Okay!" The dorm dad exclaims. "There's some brownies in the kitchen! Take a quick break and then meet back in the lobby in five and we'll play another game."

I follow the crowd to the kitchen, grab a brownie, and go straight back to my room. Fuck if I'm putting myself through any more of that shit tonight.

My room is the second door on the left on the ground floor. Most of the seniors have the privilege of not having to have a roommate - thankfully I'm one of them. I got here a few days ago so almost everything is unpacked, I just haven't really decorated my room yet. There's a box in the corner of all my pictures, posters, awards, booze and drugs.

Just kidding, I didn't bring anything but booze and drugs.

In all seriousness, though, I need to go out and legally buy myself some booze soon if I'm gonna survive this place.

As I much on my brownie, the first thing I pull out of the box is a huge black sheet. This is going on my wall. It's too bright in here. I hold it up and realize that, unfortunately, the sheet will only cover part of the wall I want to pin it to. Grabbing a handful of thumbtacks, I decide instead to pin it so it drapes in the far corner of the room, above my bed.

Much better.

I pull out all the bits and pieces I'll decorate the room with: an Amy Winehouse _may she rest in peace_ poster, a framed print of a dark and moody Rothko, my Jah Babylon poster. Finally the space is starting to look like something I would be willing to associate myself with.

I'm about to start pinning pictures to the corkboard above my desk when I hear a knock on the door. I sigh.

"Come in."

"Santana? It's Santana, right?" A small brunette with a giant nose pokes her head in. I can already tell by her big brown eyes and obnoxious smile that I can't stand her.

"Yeah." I grunt. She steps in tentatively.

"I'm Rachel. Your parents were talking to my Daddy at Opening Ceremony."

My _Daddy_, seriously? I sigh, turning back to the pictures in my hand. "So you're the one they asked to 'look out for me,' huh?"

"Yeah, I, uh, guess so." She has this weird combination of sounding really timid but having an unusually loud speaking voice.

"I suppose you're here to drag me back to all the joyous festivities in the lobby?"

"No, actually, I - well I mean yes the dorm parents were wondering where you were so I told them I'd come talk to you but I think they understand that you're probably a little overwhelmed right now. Dan and Linda are pretty flexible about things like that. They didn't ask me to come bring you back." A pause. "May I sit down?"

No but really, seriously? "Actually, there's all kinds of shit on the bed, and -"

"That's fine, I can sit on the floor."

I gape at her because I mean do I literally need to spell out to her in bold letters that she's not welcome in my room? "Whatever." I turn back to the photos and start pinning them to the cork board above my desk.

"So, Santana." She smiles patronizingly. "Where are you from?"

I let a beat pass to let her know that I don't want her here. Eventually I turn back to her and she still has that creepy keen expression on her face. I sigh, rolling my eyes. "Ohio."

"Ohio, really! That must've been nice." I snort at her. She doesn't notice. "I myself was born in Ohio but I haven't really been there since I was a baby. You see, my Daddy and his best friend have been working as Zoologists in Nigeria for the last fifteen years. I was homeschooled up until ninth grade."

"Shocker." I mutter under my breath. She doesn't hear me and continues.

"Eventually they realized they needed to send me to a proper American-based high school, particularly so that I could pursue the arts. CAG actually has a very good musical program, by the way, so if you're good at singing, maybe you'd like to join choir? You seem like you would be an alto, based on your speaking -"

"Oh my god." I snap. "Go." I point to the door. She looks up at me in shock. I raise my eyebrows at her expectantly. She looks around, as if there was someone else in the room I was ordering to leave. I nod at her like _yeah, you,_ waving my hand at her. She hesitates for a moment before pushing herself off the ground, looking back at me once with a damn good kicked puppy expression and finally exiting my sacred space, closing the door behind her.

_So much for being nice_, I think as I flop my back onto my cluttered bed, closing my eyes as I sigh in frustration.

I may have drifted to sleep, so I snap to when I hear a knock on the door. I look at the clock on my nightstand. 8:32.

"You have a phone call, Santana."

Ah, the parentals. Due to check in on the status of their newly orphaned child.

"Coming."

I get up and walk out of my room. At this point, the 'dorm bonding' event must be over, because when I walk through the hall, doors are open and music is playing and girls are socializing. Someone at the end of the hall is blaring Ke$ha. Disgusting.

The phone is in this box right between the lobby and the hall with the rooms. I walk in and, sure enough, the phone is off the hook. I hesitate before I pick it up.

"Hello?"

"MIJA!" My mother screeches. I pull the receiver away from my ear slightly, wincing.

"Hi, mom." I grumble.

"How was your first day? Tell me everything."

"It was fine." I sigh exasperatedly. A few seconds of silence.

"Oh, come on, really tell me about it! Please?"

I stubbornly maintain the silence. I notice now that the inside of the booth is completely covered in doodles and signatures. I wonder how many years' worth of graffiti is in here. I notice one signature with '1997' written under it.

"Now mija I'm not going to pay a fortune to make overseas calls to you every night if you're not even going to talk to us."

"Oh my god mom please don't call me every night that's so embarrassing."

She laughs. "On second thought, maybe I'll call you every night and every morning."

"Moooom..." I groan.

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding. So tell me about today, did you meet anyone you like?"

A tiny smile spreads across my face as I grab a pen and begin etching my own name into the wood of the desk. My mind immediately went to Brittany. You'd think that it would've gone to Quinn first given that I spent most of the day with her, and I generally know more about her, but no. The first image I see is the impish grin trying to quote She's the Man. Also unicorn socks.

"You know, actually, I did." I say and I sound like I'm a little surprised by it. Maybe I am. I hope she and I end up being friends this year. Like I actually genuinely do.

"Oh good. Any boys you think are cute?" I set the pen down with a slight snap, rolling my eyes. Jumping right into it, are we? I sigh. Well, what cute boys have I seen today?

"Um..." I start. "This guy named Blaine is cute. Everyone seems to really like him."

"Yeah? I'll have to add him as a facebook friend so I can stalk him."

"Mom." I say sternly.

"I'm kidding, Santana. I'll start stalking him when _you_ add him as a friend."

"Anyway." I cut her off. There's nothing quite like parents trying to bond with you by joking about potential boyfriends. "What's up with things over there?" I ask, purposely avoiding saying 'how are things' because that sounds too much like 'how are you' and that sounds too much like I actually care. Which, I mean, I do. But they don't need to know that. Not right now, anyway. I'm still supposed to be mad at them.

"Well, we haven't been here very long. Most of our things shipped over just fine, I think. Tomorrow we'll start working at a temporary hospital they set up in southern Agadir. I'm hearing that they're very short-handed so we'll certainly be busy."

"Uh-huh." I say boredly.

My mom huffs. "Well, mija, I'm glad our lives are so interesting to you."

"Don't worry, they're not."

She huffs again. "Santana Lopez. This attitude has got to stop! Have you been treating people there like this as well?"

"No, mom." I totally have been. "I've been trying really hard to be nice to people." Which, actually, isn't entirely untrue now that I think about it. I just haven't really been very successful.

"Good. Now, if I start hearing about you being mean to other kids, I will call the dorm parents and arrange some kind of grounding or punishment for you."

What, and being shipped to a boarding school in the middle of fucking nowhere isn't punishment enough?

"Okay, mom."

"Good, now - " There's noise and shuffling coming from the receiver and I hear my mother complain _I wasn't finished!_ before I'm greeted by my bellowing father on the other line.

"Santana!"

"Hey, dad."

"How was your first day?"

"It was fine."

"Did you make friends?"

"Yeah, I did."

"Tell me about them!"

"Okay, well," I pause, picking up the pen again. "I hung out a lot with a blonde girl named Quinn. I guess her dad is the director of CAG."

"Making friends in high-up places, I see. Very good." My dad muses. I chuckle slightly.

"Well, of course." I say. "And then I had lunch with her and a few other people that were pretty nice, and after school I tried out for volleyball and met this girl named Brittany -"

"Wait, you're trying out for volleyball? You never played volleyball in school, did you?" My dad asks, confused.

"No, but some of the girls said that didn't really matter as long as I'm athletic. Which I am."

"Ah, I see. So you met this girl named Brittany?"

"Oh, yeah." I carve my name in deeper. "I don't know, I met this girl Brittany and she was really nice. Actually, now that I think about it, everyone here is really nice. People here are weirdly nice, dad."

I hear my mom laugh in the background, _Good! Maybe they'll rub off on you!_

"I hope they don't." My dad whispers conspiratorially. I can almost see the mischievous grin on his face. "You wouldn't be my Santana if you didn't have a little fire in you." My mom: _Don't encourage her!_

I grin. "I completely agree, Papi." I hear the phone being fumbled around again.

"Santana." I hear my mom say warningly. "In all seriousness, please don't cause problems or get arrested while you are there."

I toss the pen across the desk and lean back in the seat. "You know, mom, it's actually been a really long day. I'm really tired. I want to go to bed." I hear my dad protest in the background, _it's barely nine-thirty!_

My mom sighs. "Please, Santana."

"Goodnight mom." I hang up the phone and stare at it for a moment before leaving the phone booth and going back to my room. I'll definitely hear about that the next time I talk to them. I haphazardly push everything off of my bed and lay down, watching the ceiling. Whoever is playing Ke$ha is playing it really loudly. I start grinding my teeth in frustration.

I need a drink.

I took the liberty of googling the various alcohol-serving establishments in town before my unsupervised internet privileges could be torn from me. There are three bars in town. There's ChaBah, but that's right in the middle of town and literally the building over from the one that Quinn, and therefore the director of the damn school lives in. That's off the list. There's Blue Bird, which is in the middle of the older part of town, but it's a tiny cocktail bar and I don't really feel like dealing with any German bitches tonight.

That leaves Route 66.

So I turned off my lights, snuck out my very own personal sliding door that every room in Palm has, like_ seriously you're just asking all of your residents to sneak out every night._ And now here I am, standing in front of Route 66. I shake my head incredulously as I take it in. Get this, it's an American-themed bar in Germany. Genius. Before I go in, I look through the windows and scan for anyone that might recognize me. I don't see anyone. Whatever. I step in and sit on a stool at the bar in the far corner. It's a very different atmosphere from any party or even bar I'd ever been to back in Ohio. Everything is more relaxed. I mean, it is a Tuesday night after all. The weird thing about it though is there are more people than you would expect, but a lot of them aren't even drinking. I guess since it's a weeknight I was expecting more loner alcoholics sitting in corners, drinking their pain away – oh wait, that's me – than people actually just, you know. Socializing.

The bar itself is kind of cramped and cigarette smoke permeates the air, and dear god some of these decorations are tacky as fuck, but it's nice. I could probably spend a lot of time here. I probably will spend a lot of time here. The bartender asks me what I want. Or at least I assume he does, since my German-speaking level is somewhere around .1%. Coincidentally, this is the minimum I'd like my blood alcohol level to be at before I leave tonight.

"Hefeweizen." I say simply. He grabs a tall glass, filling it expertly through a tap, and hands it to me. It's amazing. Oh my god I needed this. I make a mental note to stop by one of the grocery stores tomorrow after volleyball so I can buy myself a bottle of liquor. They don't even have liquor stores or anything because people just drink alcohol and it's normal and nobody fucking cares. If there were going to be any reason I'd end up enjoying my time here, that would be it.

I'm almost finished with my first one when someone sits in the stool next to me and calls the bartender.

"Johann! Ein Hefeweizen für mich und einen anderen für das Mädchen."

I recognize him, shit. Though, judging by his mohawk, leather jacket, and the fact that he's in my class, I'm probably not about to get in trouble.

"So, the only new senior is a rebel, huh?"

"Guess so." I smirk at him as I down the rest of my first beer. The guy at the bar pushes two new ones at us.

"I'm Puck."

"Santana."

"CAG gettin' to ya already?" He nods to the new beer, which I've already taken a huge swig of.

"Yeah, you could say that. I think it was _after_ the dorm made us do the human knot that I realized I needed a beer or five."

"Oh, you're a dorm student." He has a look of slight disgust. "That's gonna be real shitty. Sorry."

"Yeah, so I've gathered." I sigh. "This place is actually going to kill me."

"Well, hey." He leers. "If you ever find yourself getting really sick of everything and need to get away for a night," he gestures to himself, "you can always spend the night with me."

My grin widens as I look at him. "Believe it or not, a suggestive comment like that was exactly what I needed right now." I take another drink. "Good to know at least one person here knows how to have fun."

"Nah, you just gotta know where to look."

"So people don't necessarily follow the rules here, huh?"

He shrugs. "Well, some do. I've been trying to get into Fabray's pants for years. No success so far."

I laugh at him. "But you're so charming! I can't even imagine her being able to resist."

He smiles as he nods, playing along. "You know, that's what I've been saying. She really has no idea what she's missing out on."

"Yeah, I bet." I raise my eyebrows, lifting the glass to my lips again. "So who all is like that here?"

"Besides Quinn?" He takes a drink while he ponders my question. "Blaine. He's never had a girlfriend, never had sex, and I'm about ninety-nine percent sure he's never even kissed a girl. Nee is kind of like that, too." I must look surprised. "Right? Wouldn't expect her to be. She talks about being naked and acts super lesbo all the damn time."

"Yeah, what is that all about?" I ask out of curiosity, leaning on my elbow.

Puck laughs mirthlessly. "This place is just all kinds of weird and fucked up. For some reason it's okay to act gay with your friends because everybody knows you're not _actually_ gay because gay is just something the secular media made up."

"This is kind of weird and a little fucked up." I affirm, furrowing my brow.

"Yeah. Welcome to CAG." He lifts his glass to me, then takes a big gulp. "So what's your story?"

"My parents dumped me here after I totaled my car and got arrested for drunk driving." I deadpan. "You?"

"Ooh, damn. Not sure I can top that. My mom is American but she works in Basel, so I go to school here. Not a whole lot to it."

"So how have you managed to survive here?"

He eyes his beer with a grin. "Lots of alcohol."

"Ever gotten in trouble for it?"

"Are you kidding? I'm the bad boy of this place. I get suspended like every week."

"Impressive." I nod. "You know, it's funny, all the people you said were uptight and goody-good are all the people I hung out with today."

"Yeah, I saw that." He shrugs. "I mean they're all nice and hot and everything. Just, you know. Don't expect to have any real fun with them. They're all stiff as they come."

"Wanky." I smirk confidently, leaning closer. "I bet I could get Blaine to be stiff as he comes."

"Cocky, I like that." Puck appraises before he sets down his drink and turns to me with a mischievous glint in his eyes. "Tell you what." He points at me. "Let's make a bet. If you can deflower Blaine before I can deflower Quinn, I'll pay for all your drinks on grad night. And vice versa."

I burst out laughing. "Deflower? Oh my god, what era are you from? Also, I thought you said you've been trying to tap Quinn for _years_ with no luck. Sure you wanna be up against me?" I put up air quotes, "'Deflowering' guys is something of a pastime for me."

He shrugs at me like he already knows he's gonna win. "So take the bet." He holds his hand out.

I eye him suspiciously before grabbing his hand. "Deal."

So after a few more beers I may have let him pull me into the bathroom to quietly fuck me (quick and easy) before walking back to the dorm. Which, you know, that's not trashy at all. Whatever. It wasn't anything special. Although to be fair, sex has never really been anything special for me. It's always been more of a game and a power play, and I'm kind of starting to resign myself to the fact that it just isn't fun for girls, or at least for me. I'm still hoping it's one of those things that you learn to enjoy as you get older, like black coffee or reading books.

I get back to my room and slide the door open as quietly as I can while somewhat inebriated, change my clothes, and collapse into my bed.

As I drift in bed, the world spinning around me, I think about how as long as I can hang out with laid back people like Puck and be friends with a girl like Brittany, maybe I'll be able to get through my time here. Maybe it shouldn't matter so much, hanging out with the people that are popular. And my god, Brittany's eyes are so _blue. _Like, I had noticed, I just hadn't really thought about it, and I really hope I have at least one class with her this year, maybe we'll be friends...

My thoughts spiral into half-asleep nonsense, and I fall into a state of oblivion.

(Brittany is in my dreams.)

...

**AN**: Not much to say? I think you're great.

Don't give up on sweet lady kisses.


	4. She's Got You High

**She's Got You High **- _and you don't even know yet._

(Mumm-Ra)

* * *

The first thoughts that register when my alarm goes off are_ Jesus that's loud, ow my head_ and _I am so fucking thirsty._ Now, it's really not like I drank that much last night. I'm just really prone to hangovers, which is totally not conducive at all to being a teenage alcoholic. My life would be way easier if I was one of those assholes who downs half a Nalgene of straight vodka and wakes up the next day all chipper and I feel totally fine, why are you so hungover? I had way more to drink than you.

Like, kill yourselves. I hate all of you.

I groan as I slowly pull myself into a sitting position, rubbing my temples. This day is going to be perfect, I can tell already. I kind of hate myself for doing the dirty with Puck in a bar bathroom on the first night, but I'll get over it. Always do.

The clock on my nightstand says 7:32. I go into my bathroom - that's right, I have my own bathroom, bitches - and splash water on my face, taking a few gulps from my hands. I step into the shower, wash the smell of cigarette smoke, beer, and sex off my body and out of my hair, get out, dry my hair, make it look awesome, do my makeup, pick another short, form-fitting dress because I want to piss everyone at this school off. The whole routine. At that point my clock says 8:19. For some reason classes here start about an hour later than normal American schools: 8:50 every morning. Hey, I'm not complaining if I get to sleep in another hour. I smirk at the mirror before packing everything for the day and leaving my room. A lot of the girls are in the lobby area eating breakfast or in the kitchen making lunches. The idea of eating food right now makes me a little queasy, so I bypass them and head straight out the door.

It's about a ten minute, mostly steep downhill walk from Palm to CAG. We're in the middle of the Black Forest, so that means lush rolling hills and little creeks and vibrant trees. It's clammy yet bright. I have to admit that the little town itself is kind of quaint; a lot of the buildings I walk past look like they were built in like the 19th century or earlier. It's kind of funny to me that because everything here is so old, it seems like the people who are in charge of the town feel like anything that's constructed has to look modern and edgy to compensate. It was a weird juxtaposition to walk through the oldest part of town on main street, with all the darkened and aged wood and the cobblestone square and see that the streetlamps are these curved gleaming silver modern things that look like they belong in Star Trek.

Anyway, I reach the school and go straight to the locker room to drop off my volleyball stuff. Right outside the locker room is a metal heater that if I lean against, I can see everyone who comes in the front door. I pull out my iPhone and open Candy Crush – which I'm pretty bomb at, by the way. Even though my parents wouldn't let me have a global service plan – which has totally sucked – I've still been carrying my phone in my jacket pocket out of habit. I don't understand how everyone here is able to function without a phone. Like, how do they know where someone's gonna be or where to meet for something? What do they do when they're got two minutes to kill? Actually _talk _to people? I mean that's fucking _archaic._

It's just really weird to me. I guess that's why people here use facebook so much, since it's basically their only means of communication. A few people added me over the last few days and some of them have thousands of tagged and uploaded photos and seriously _so_ many wall posts. People in Ohio weren't as crazy with facebook.

After about ten minutes, a flood of students comes through the front door. Palm and Maug are the only dorms that are in town, so we just walk to school, and the rest of them are in surrounding towns and villages. Every morning a bus goes through them to pick up the kids from all the other dorms. Among them I see Blaine, Brittany and Nee walking together. Blaine waves and heads in a different direction while Nee and Brittany make their way towards me. They sink against the wall on either side of me.

"I don't wanna go to school." Brittany whines to my right, fiddling with her loose gray tank top. It has a picture of a cat's face on it. Now, on anyone else, this shirt would look ridiculous, but on Brittany it's honestly perfect and just kind of, well, cute.

"I feel ya." Nee sighs at my left, closing her eyes and leaning her head back. "I think maybe I needed another month of break before I was really ready to come back. Or just a whole year."

Brittany reaches across me to pat Nee on the head jokingly before she nudges me. "What class do you have first?"

"English." I reply. Brittany's face brightens.

"Me too! Or wait," her face falls for a second, "normal or AP?"

"Um, definitely not AP."

Her smile returns. "Oh yay. Sit next to me?"

I smile back slightly. "Yeah, sure."

The five minute warning bell rings. Brittany and Nee push off the wall with and stand up, walking to the locker room to drop off their sports bags.

"You know what room it is, right?" Brittany says to me.

I nod.

"Kay. See you in a sec."

I push myself off the wall and walk out the doors to the other building and head straight for the English 12 room, choosing two empty desks near the window to sit at. I put my bag on the desk next to me to signify that it's taken. Other kids start to file in, and I eventually see Brittany walk through and scan the room for a moment, then smile at me once she sees me. I smile back. Before she can even begin to start walking to our desk, someone sits in the seat I saved for her. It's Puck.

"Hey there pretty lady." He says with a dumb wiggle of his eyebrows. It's not like the way Brittany said it yesterday.

I turn back and Brittany is looking at me confusedly. I shrug at her apologetically and turn back to Puck, forcing a winning smirk.

"Hey yourself."

I shouldn't have had sex with a guy from school, at least not if I wasn't sure that he wouldn't be a problem. Who knows how many classes I have with him – I might see him all the fucking time. He'd better not fucking be the clingy type.

The bell rings, and a tall woman with dark hair stands up, pulling a book from her desk, and settles on a stool at the front of class. "I'm Mrs. Abrams, but most of you know that because you all know my son." She smiles. "I think there's only one new person in your class this year, right?" She scans the classroom until she spots me. "Welcome, Santana." I press my lips together and raise my eyebrows in response. "The rest of you were here last year, but just to refresh everyone, every morning there is an extra ten minutes of class for your first period teacher to do some kind of devotional. I'm going to start out with the same verse I do every year. Senior year is really a time of uncertainty and doubt, figuring out what college you want to go to, what you want to do with your life, realizing that after this year, you'll all be gone and some of you will never see other people in this room again." She shrugs, "It's sad, but it's true. So," She opens the book to a marked page. "'For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Jeremiah 11-13."

Wonderful, it's the Bible. I resist the urge to roll my eyes. Instead, I stare out the window, tuning Mrs. Bible Thumper over here out as she continues talking about how "God has a plan for all of you" and "don't stress too much about the future" and my mind drifts once again to my parents and what were they thinking when they sent me here? I mean really parents are casually practicing Christians. You know, the kind that have Bibles gathering dust on shelves, and that only go to Church twice a year, if even that, for Christmas and Easter. I just think that if they could really experience even just the last couple days of what my life has been like here, they would realize that it's kind of overkill. I'm being forced to take a Bible class this semester, every day there's a ten-minute devotions, Fridays are specifically scheduled so that there's a forty minute Chapel period, we're forced to go to church every Sunday, and every dorm does some kind of fellowship or whatever thing every Sunday night. It's just too much, you know? I don't even know if I believe in all of this crap, and it's being shoved down my throat regardless. I mean I'm fucking hungover, you don't need to make me suffer any more than I already am.

After what seems like forever the ten minutes are over and she starts talking to us about her expectations from us for the year and giving us the syllabus and doing all that first day of classes shit that every human hates. Puck is sitting next to me doodling the most ridiculous crap on his syllabus, clearly not paying attention. Finally we're let out of class.

I leave the English room, Puck winking at me as he walks in the opposite direction. Brittany is leaning against the wall just outside the room.

"Sorry." I say to her sheepishly.

"No, you're fine." She shakes her head, assuring me. "You know Puck?" She cocks her head, brows slightly furrowed.

"Yeah, uh..." I can't exactly explain _how_ I know him, certainly not in the middle of this busy hallway, anyway. I'm not sure if I told Brittany about last night whether she would tell someone and I'd get in trouble. She doesn't seem the type, though. "I'll tell you later." Brittany raises her eyebrows and then shrugs.

"Alright. Wanna have lunch together?"

Okay, seriously, people here are obsessed with lunch dates. I then remember I was so put off by my hangover and getting out of the dorm this morning that I hadn't even bothered to make myself a lunch.

"I didn't bring one. I'll still hang out with you, though?" I say hopefully.

"Yeah! We can go to Hieber's and grab some brötchen and cheese or something."

Hiebers? Brötchen? The confusion must show on my face because she clarifies, "Hiebers is a grocery store close to the school, you passed it on your way here. Brötchen is like rolls."

"Just rolls and cheese? For lunch?" I ask, wrinkling my nose.

"Oh, Santana." Brittany shakes her head, clutching her heart. "I swear these are the best rolls you will ever eat. You'll never eat American bread again."

I giggle. Oh my god I just giggled. I scrunch my nose again, clearing my throat. "That good, huh?"

She nods emphatically. "Oh yeah."

"Sounds good, I'll take your word for it." We continue smiling at each other for just a beat too long. "Well," I say, breaking eye contact. "I'll see you later, then."

She waves at me in response, then heads down the hall.

My next class is World Views. I don't even know what that means exactly, but it was listed as a social studies credit and it's required for all seniors to take it. Quinn is in this class, too. I sit down next to her. The teacher introduces himself as Mr. Schuester - he's also the choir teacher, and he spends like the first ten minutes of the class time trying to convince all of us that choir is so great and everyone should join. I mean, I'm already in it so, you know, whatever. I like singing, okay?

He tells us about the class and gives us the syllabus. Turns out, we'll all be studying religions of different cultures. This is surprising to me. Wouldn't the school be worried that we're all going to, I don't know, convert to some other religion if they give us the information and means to?

Quinn is also sitting next to this giant kid with a chronic idiot grin and a douchey fauxhawk. From the way they interact, which is basically sixth grade flirting and awkwardness, they are either newly dating or in that awkward virginal we're-not-dating-technically-but-we're-both-defini tely-taken stage of relationships. It's kind of sickening; I avoid them.

I have art next with a bunch of underclassmen and a boy in a wheelchair. I don't really understand how a kid in a wheelchair can even attend here because most of the school is definitely not wheelchair accessible. His classes must all be on the ground floors or something. Or maybe he gets people to carry him places, I don't know.

Fourth period is study hall. I walk into what I think must also be a math classroom and am barely inside the door when someone behind me yells,

"Hey!" I whip around, and see that it's Brittany, leaning against the wall near the door. "We have the same study hall, that's awesome."

A smile spreads across my face. "Yeah, totally. Where are you gonna sit?" I gesture to the classrom.

She shakes her head, "Oh, I'm not staying."

"Oh, okay." My face must fall just a little. Brittany giggles.

"You're coming with me, you boob."

I burst out laughing. "Did you just call me a boob?" Brittany shrugs, feigning nonchalance as she looks at her nails with a grin. The teacher, sitting at her desk, looks at us over her computer with slight contempt. "Wait, where are you going? Or we, I mean. Don't we have to stay here?"

Brittany shakes her head, "Seniors can leave during study hall. We just have to sign out."

The bell rings.

The woman stands up. "I'm Mrs. Hagberg, I'll be monitoring your study hall this semester. I expect everyone in this room to be productive during this period. Seniors may sign out with their name and destination on this." She slaps a clipboard onto the table in the front of the room. "Happy studying." She sighs, waddling back to her desk. I look around at the class and notice that Nee and Kristen are sitting at a desk in the corner of the room. I think they're juniors, so they won't be able to come with us. Brittany has already gone forward to the clipboard to sign both of us out. We head outside and drop our bags by the door.

"So," Brittany turns to me, "Lunch? Oh! We should go to Döner."

"You don't want amazing German bread, huh?" I smirk at her.

"Nah, we can get bread anytime. Döner Kebaps are where it's at."

I gesture in front of us. "Lead the way."

Brittany curtsies before sashaying in front of me. I follow, shaking my head with a smile.

"Okay, so. Santana. I don't really know anything about you other than the fact that you haven't watched She's the Man nearly enough."

I laugh. "Well what would you like to know?"

Brittany ponders for a moment, looking to the side before asking, "Which Harry Potter movie was your favorite?"

My mind stutters for a moment because that was totally not what I was expecting her to ask. "Wha -, um. How do you even know if I've seen Harry Potter?"

She gives me a look like _come on, everyone's seen Harry Potter._ Which, yeah. Pretty much everyone has.

"Well how do you even know if I like Harry Potter?" I challenge. She gives me another look. "Fine, okay. I like Harry Potter. I guess..." I think about it for a moment. "I'd probably say the sixth one?" I say tentatively. Brittany wrinkles her nose slightly.

"Half-Blood Prince, really? Why?"

I shrug awkwardly. People aren't really supposed to know that I'm into stuff like this. "I don't know..." I trail off. Brittany nudges me lightly as we walk, encouraging me to continue. "I just like that it really explored the kind of mundane aspects of living in the Wizarding world, you know? I liked seeing the stupid teenage drama and Quidditch tryouts and stuff. I feel like whole idea of Hogwarts and the magic and the houses and Quidditch and everything is, like, the coolest thing about the series and we really got to see that in the sixth one." Oh my god that was the nerdiest thing that's ever come out of my mouth. Jesus this is embarrassing. I can feel my ears starting to turn hot, and I avoid looking at Brittany.

"I think you just made Half-Blood Prince my favorite Harry Potter movie. And I was a diehard Prisoner of Azkaban fan. Because, I mean, time travel."

Okay, so she doesn't think I'm weird. This is good.

"Why was that the first question you asked me?" I ask her, shaking my head and smiling slightly, like I'd never seen or known anything quite like her before. (Which I haven't.) "Why not, like, 'where are you from' or 'what do your parents do' or the number of siblings I have or something?"

She shrugs. "Everybody always asks those questions first, so that means everyone always has a perfect polite answer to all of them ready whenever they need it. I figure I'll learn a lot more about a person if I ask a question about something totally random like that, you know? It catches people off guard and they don't really have the time to come up with the," she puts her fingers up in air quotes, "'right' answer."

Yeah, okay, that's pretty smart. I snort. "Yeah, you definitely caught me off guard there."

Brittany grins at me. "I know."

"No but seriously," I say, "where are you from and all of that? What's your story?"

"I dunno." Brittany says, her head down as she nudges a rock with her foot while we walk.

"Oh, come on." I protest. "I just totally nerded out on you. Tell me something!"

"I don't really like talking about myself." She shrugs. "I'd rather you tell me your story." Brittany looks at me simply, prompting me.

"Okay, how about this." I suggest. "You ask me a question, I answer, I ask you a question, you answer. And so on."

She chuckles slightly. "That's totally cliché."

"So?" I raise my eyebrows at her expectantly.

Brittany sighs. "Fiiiine."

I grin at her. "Awesome, okay," I say. I can't think of any unexpected questions like hers. "How long have you been at CAG?" The question sounds boring the moment it leaves my mouth.

"Since sophomore year." Brittany says. "Ummmm... Ke$ha, Rihanna, or Britney?"

"Oh, my girl Ri-Ri for sure. Can't stand Ke$ha."

Brittany literally stops in her tracks. I turn around to face her halted figure with an amused expression.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. How do you not like Ke$ha?"

I shrug. "I dunno, she just seems like kind of a dumb white bitch with no talent."

Brittany holds up a hand as if taking away my permission to speak. "Ke$ha is a genius. But she's like actually a genius. She has an IQ of over 140, and scored like super high on her SAT."

"Oh...kay...?" I say uncertainly.

"Also, she writes all of her own music, unlike Rihanna, and she's also not dating a guy that beat her up a few years ago. Boom."

"Okay, that's fair. Still can't stand her music, though."

"Oh, I will teach you my ways." Brittany assures. "Just wait."

I grin. "We'll see. Chocolate or vanilla ice cream?"

"Definitely chocolate." She says without hesitation.

"What? Vanilla!"

"Vanilla's so boring!" Brittany whines.

"Yeah but it goes with everything and chocolate is just so overpowering sometimes, you know?"

Brittany shrugs. "I like it. Ummm, oh! You were gonna tell me how you know Puck?"

"Yeah, I -" I gauge her expression before I continue. "Okay, can I ask you something?"

"Yeah, sure."

"How much do you really follow the rules here? Like sex and alcohol and stuff like that."

Brittany thinks about it for a moment before answering. "I don't think it's as big a deal as a lot of people make it out to be. It's so easy to get alcohol here, and I just think it's kind of a silly rule."

I nod. "What about sex? Are you - I mean this might be too personal - but are you still a virgin?"

She shakes her head. "No, and I don't think that's that big a deal either. People just have needs, you know? Especially at our age. I think it's dumb that people like everyone here just want to kind of," She makes a sweeping motion with her hand, "dust that under the rug."

I sigh. "Good. Okay, so the reason I know Puck?" I continue gauging her expression "...is because I met him at Route 66 last night," So far so good. "...and we had sex in the bathroom."

Brittany stares at me for a moment before she bursts out laughing, looking at me a little incredulously. "Oh my gosh, seriously? I mean I knew he'd go after you because you're new and you're really hot and all that," my face flushes a little (she thinks I'm hot), "but on the first night? I'm kind of impressed. Also, the bathroom?" She grimaces at me. "Gross."

"Yeah, not my most classy moment."

"It's okay, I had sex with him in the janitor's closet once."

"Wait, you've had sex with him too?"

"Yeah! He and I kind of casually hooked up at the end of sophomore year." Good, so that means he's probably not the clingy type. Brittany continues with a bright grin, "So now you and I are, like, vagina sisters!"

"Um." I start laughing a little uncontrollably. "I -" I keep laughing and we both end up falling into a fit of giggles. I calm down a little and look at her with a sort of dumbfounded amusement. "You're really something else, you know that?" I say in between chuckles. She nods, grinning.

"I've been told." She says, laughter still in her voice. "Is it my turn or yours?"

"I think it's yours." I say, still smiling widely. As I watch her put on a pondering look, thinking of a new question, I notice we've started walking in the older part of town. "Wait, how much farther is this place?"

"Like a half kilometer, tops." She says. I pause to look at her for a moment.

"So you really just grew up overseas, huh?" I say.

She turns to look at me. "What makes you say that?"

"If I'd asked someone in the states that question, they'd've said it in terms of time like 'oh, five minutes.' Or at least miles, not kilometers."

Brittany nods. "Yeah, I guess that's true. You just get used to it."

"God, if I had a dollar for every time someone's said that to me this week." I say, shaking my head. "Some things I don't really know if I can get used to."

"Like what?" She asks.

"Like..." This isn't really something I want to talk about; I wish she hadn't asked me. "Like how..." (I don't want to talk about this.) "Just how... open... you guys are about being naked and your body and stuff. It's just kind of... yeah..." I trail off awkwardly. Brittany has on a slightly amused expression.

"It makes you uncomfortable."

"I think it would make _anyone_ uncomfortable." I defend.

Brittany laughs. "You really will get used to it, I promise. Everybody does. Like, Kristen used to be really awkward about it too, like you, but now she's a naked one like all the rest of us."

"I'm not that awkward about it." I mumble in protest.

"When I handed you your shirt yesterday your hand was shaking." Fuck, she noticed.

"I wasn't expecting to have your boobs in my face!" I burst defensively. Brittany starts laughing again. "You caught me completely off guard!" I shove her shoulder lightly, unable to keep my own grin from appearing. "Actually," I say, "you've pretty much done nothing but catch me off guard since I met you."

She gives me a measuring look. I match her stare as uwaveringly as I can while I feel my face get hot again. She seems to have that effect on me a lot. Seriously, thank fucking god I'm Latina. This would be so embarrassing otherwise.

"Anyway." She says, breaking eye contact. "Really, soon you'll be running around naked with the rest of us and we'll all go skinny dipping and streaking and everyone's gonna be like 'Santana your boobs are awesome' and you'll be like 'I know, right?'" She gestures to my chest. "Because really your boobs are kind of awesome, if you didn't know."

Yeah, okay. My face was hot before, but I'm definitely sure it's red. She _has _to be able to tell my face is flushed. I laugh a little awkwardly.

"U-um thanks." I stammer. I fucking stammer. Just fucking shoot me. I refuse to meet her eyes this time and we keep walking in silence for a while. When I finally look over, she's not next to me. She's standing almost fifteen feet behind me, covering her mouth and looking at me, trying not to laugh.

"We're here!" She calls out, pointing to the restaurant next to her.

Somebody just dig me a grave, right now, and bury me in it. My game around this girl is just absolutely terrible. It's not even just terrible; it's completely nonexistent. I'm a stuttering mess. What the hell is wrong with me?

She holds the glass door open for me and lets me in. I try to regain some of my composure and look her in the eye when I say, "Thanks."

"No problem." She says, still grinning.

It smells really good in here. My hangover at this point is pretty much worn off, and I'm starting to feel the effects of having not eaten since dinner last night.

"What do you want?" Brittany asks. "It's on me."

"You don't have to do that, I have money." I say. I'd feel bad if she paid, especially considering what I overheard between her and Coach Sylvester yesterday.

"No, I asked you out. I'm buying." Brittany insists. Caught off guard, face flushed, ducked head. This is becoming something of a routine at this point. I should really start expecting for her to be, well, unexpected. Here, I can assume that being 'asked out' by a girl is not the equivalent of a date, but she sure as hell just made it sound like one. I recover quickly and look up at the board with the menu items and prices. I have absolutely no idea what any of the shit on there is.

"I'll just have whatever you have. I don't really know what any of this means." I say, gesturing to the menu.

"You sure? I can explain what they are."

"No, I trust your judgement." I say, smiling at her. She smiles back with just a hint of bashfulness that it strikes me that maybe two can play at this game. I can catch her off guard, too.

She goes up to the counter where a Turkish guy is waiting at the cash register for her order.

"Kann ich habe..." She takes a moment to think. "Zwei kinder ufkas - nur ein ohne zwiebeln, ein pommes, und zwei Apfelschorles bitte?"

"Und das ist alles für dich?"

"Ja, danke."

"Bitte." He nods at us with a warm smile, leaving the counter to make our food.

We sit at a small table next to the large glass windows at the front of the restaurant. The guy behind the counter comes out and sets two bottles of amber liquid in front of us. I open mine and take a sip and it basically just tastes like apple juice and club soda.

"Apple juice and mineral water." Brittany confirms, gesturing to the drink. "It's kind of a big deal here."

I nod. "Huh." I set the bottle on the table, folding my arms and leaning back in my seat. "Okay." I say, preparing another question for our game. "How do you eat Oreos?"

"Dip them in milk, duh. I don't trust people who do the twisty thing and eat the frosting first." She says like that's not even a real question.

"Right?" I say. "It's like they're so impatient to eat the frosting that they don't even bother with the cookie part. When I was a kid I did that and left the cookie part and I swear I was like the worst little kid ever."

"What? The cookie is the best part!" Brittany exclaims, an incredulous look on her face.

"No way, it's all about the frosting! I just tolerate the cookie part."

She scoffs jokingly at me. "Man, I don't know if we can be friends! Also, I have a hard time believing you were the worst little kid ever."

"Oh, I totally was. I was the monster child that just did and said and took what I wanted, no fucks given. Didn't care who I offended." I pause contemplatively. "Actually, things really haven't changed much since I was a kid." Brittany laughs because she thinks I'm making a joke, which I'm totally not. It strikes me that she hasn't really seen much of my bitchy self. It's just so hard to be mean to or even around Brittany, because she's all made up of genuine-ness and rainbows and her brightness is just stupidly infectious. I've caught a small case of Brittany-itis. A tiny smile appears on my face at the absurdity of the idea.

"Do you wear glasses?" She asks me.

"Contacts." I nod, gesturing to my eyes. "You?"

"Nuh-uh. I've always been weirdly jealous of people with glasses, though. It makes them seem so smart and sophisticated. I remember when I was a kid I popped the lenses out of these cheap plastic sunglasses I had and just wore the frames around all the time." A small smile spreads across her mouth as she looks down at the table. "I thought I was really cool."

I seize an opportunity. "Nah." I wave her off. "If you wore glasses, it'd be covering up how pretty your blue eyes are." Brittany's eyes snap up to mine with a quick flash of curiosity and maybe even surprise before her face warms with a little smile and the tiniest hint of color.

"Thanks." She says, her eyes still on me. I shrug, looking away.

My comment has both the effect I wanted and an unintended, undesired effect. I seem to have caught her off guard in kind of the same way that she's been catching me off guard, but I find myself reacting awkwardly as well because what I'd said was actually, like, true. I'd consciously thought about how pretty her eyes were before. Or maybe not quite so consciously since I was a little drunk. Anyway, it wasn't like one of those backhanded compliments I give to girls when I feel threatened, or the way I build up guys' egos to wrap them tighter around my finger.

Whatever is going on here? I'm totally out of my element. I'm getting to know another girl on a friendly and non-competitive level because I actually _want_ to. I wonder if this is normal for her. It probably is. I've never seen her be anything but sugary sweet.

I try not to look as uneasy as I feel while I start peeling the label off of my bottle. Brittany gives me an amused glance before she leans forwards onto the table with her elbows. She looks me up and down for a moment as if she's studying me before she speaks,

"If you could have lunch with any living celebrity, who would it be?"

Not missing a beat, I gesture to the restaurant, our table, and then her before saying with a crooked smirk, "You, duh."

She laughs, and I can see that hint of bashfulness on her face again before it's gone. I like this game.

"No, seriously." She prompts.

"I dunno." I shrug. "Someone like Channing Tatum or something."

"'Someone like Channing Tatum?' That's totally boring!" She shakes her head at me jokingly as if she's disappointed. "You could have lunch with anyone in the world and you don't even want Channing Tatum but someone _like_ Channing Tatum?"

"Well who would you go with?" I say, crossing my arms.

"I'm gonna be totally honest and say Ke$ha." Brittany says without an ounce of hesitation, shrugging lightly.

I groan.

"Come on," She says, "You have to admit it'd be cool to find out what she's really like behind the whole party girl front that she has. She's probably totally chill and -"

"Paula Abdul."

Brittany looks a little taken aback for a moment before she puts on an appreciative look, nodding.

"I can get down with that. She's pretty fierce."

She isn't given the time to ask me why my number one top hoe is goddamn Paula Abdul because the guy comes out from behind the counter and sets our plates of food in front of us, thank god. One plate of fries sits between us, while we each have a plate with what honestly just looks like a burrito on it. I pick it up. The softshell is more powdery and textured than normal. It's kind of more like pita bread but then not really. I take a bite.

It's not a burrito. And it's fucking delicious. I sigh, closing my eyes. "Oh my god."

Brittany chuckles at me. "Good, huh? It's lamb and then a bunch of vegetables and this ranch-like sauce that's way better than ranch."

"I want to make sweet love to whatever it is."

She laughs again and we eat in silence for a minute or two as I ponder another question to ask her for our little game. Brittany manages to get sauce that lingers on her left cheek as we eat, and a part of me wants to reach out and swipe it off with my thumb. I gesture to it instead. She cleans it off herself.

"Kay." I say, wiping my hands on a napkin. "Another question. Tell me about your family."

"That's not a question." She says playfully, mouth full. I give her a prompting look. She finishes chewing before speaking again. "Okay, well I have an older sister named Taylor, but she's like five years older than me and she mostly just tells me to listen to a lot of good music and facebook stalks all my friends. She's in med school. And then I have one little sister. Emily. She's nine. She loves soccer and The Lion King and really she's just a miniature of me in every way. My dad homeschools her in Ouagadougou," I make a face at the weird name. In response, she adds on, "Burkina Faso. My dad's kind of a lovable dork. He also loves The Lion King. He works for a charity organization that builds houses in different locations in Africa. It's pretty cool."

"And your mom?" I say without thinking about it. The playful spark noticeably leaves Brittany's eyes. They lose their brightness and turn something of a dull blue. I instantly feel bad that I asked.

"My mom was diagnosed with osteosarcoma and passed away a little over two years ago." She explains.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I had no -"

Brittany waves me off, putting on what I can tell is a slightly forced smile. "No you're totally fine, it's -, I mean, she was awesome. It's just not something I really, like, talk about."

I nod, getting the hint, and pick up a few french fries, chewing and sitting there awkwardly. Things just got way personal too fast. Brittany asks me another question to break the tension.

"Have you ever not showered for a week?" She grins as she chews on her own fries. I give her a look of disgust.

"Ew, no." I shake my head insistently. "Have you?"

"Oh, sure." She says. "Living in Africa? I've had plenty of times where I couldn't shower for, like, ages. It got so nasty."

"Why is this the question you choose as we're eating?" I say, laughing slightly.

"First thing I thought of, I guess." She shrugs, grinning at me. I shake my head at her.

We finish our meal, Brittany goes up to the register to pay for lunch, I thank her for 'asking me out' and we start to make our way back to CAG. All the while we continue to ask each other random questions, including pleasant ones such as 'would you rather die by drowning or burning?' We both choose drowning. We also determine that Brittany would be sorted into Hufflepuff, while I would be Slytherin. Brittany initially insists that I'm totally Gryffindor, but I counter that I would ask the sorting hat to put me into Slytherin regardless.

By the time we get back, the school is about halfway through lunch. We decide to join the Blaine, Quinn, Lips and Nee group for lunch. Quinn's man giant friend is here as well. I go to sit next to Brittany until I see her sit with Lips and greet him with a "hey babe" and a quick peck on his cheek. I sit with Nee instead, side-eyeing Brittany's giggling interaction with her apparent boyfriend all throughout the rest of lunch. (It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.)

I walk to AP Calc with Quinn once lunch ends. Yeah, AP Calc. I don't really know how I managed to test into it. I don't really know that I _wanted_ to test into it.

From there I go to my required Romans Bible study class _oh sweet merciful joy I can't even contain my excitement_. Brittany is in the class too, but I see that she's sitting with dear Lips again, so I sit with Blaine instead. Quinn's dad teaches this class and he kindly informs us that in order to graduate, we have to "perform" approximately thirty hours of community service. My insides burn with the rage of a million suns when I hear that particular piece of beautiful information. Fuck this school.

"A lot of people agree that if you were to choose any book in the Bible to study or read exclusively, you would get the most information and teaching from the book of Romans. Romans really encompasses a -" Blah blah blah fuck you very kindly, good sir. You're making me do community service my senior year of high school for absolutely no reason and therefore I am not required to listen to your bullshit.

"Are you in choir?" Blaine asks as we exit the stupid fucking classroom.

"Yeah." I reply.

"Awesome." Blaine grins. "Choir is so much fun. It's basically the most popular class in the whole school. A lot of people don't even get in because there's not enough room."

Weird.

Blaine and I walk into the huge choir room and choose two seats in the back row. Brittany comes in and to my surprise, instead of sitting with Lips, she comes and sits next to me. Man, I have a lot of classes with her this semester. I guess that's inevitable when there's only like fifty kids in the senior class. I smile at her in greeting. (I brighten a little.)

Mr. Schuester walks into the classroom and the people around me erupt in cheers and whoops. It's just really bizarre to me that choir is a cool class to be in at this school.

"Welcome to choir!" He shouts. More cheering. "So," He starts, "a lot of you already know how things work around here. For those who don't, you will be graded on your participation and willingness to be a part of a team. Every week I will assign a theme, and you can choose a song to sing, duet, accompany, whatever you want, and try to match it to the theme I've assigned."

I turn in alarm to Brittany. "We have to do a performance _every week?_

She shakes her head. "Keep listening."

"In order to succeed in this class, I'm going to ask you to perform at least twice. Kind of as a midterm and a final, if you will."

I sigh in relief. "Oh, okay." Brittany shoots me a grin.

"I want to encourage all of you to perform when you feel most inspired to. Whether it's the theme, or something's just really on your heart, I want you guys to express yourselves freely. I know some of you will do your sole two performances on the last day of the last week of each quarter." He chuckles. "Even if I'd rather you didn't. And I know that some of you," he gestures blatantly to Nose, who is sitting in the front row, smiling eagerly at him. "will be performing for the class every week. Wherever you fall on that spectrum, I can almost guarantee you're going to love being in this class." He claps his hands together. "Alright, let's warm up!"

We warm up, and sure enough, not five minutes later, Nose raises her hand and tells us she's prepared a "first day celebration performance" for everyone. It's a goddamn Jason Mraz song which I decide to completely tune out lest my ears start bleeding. I end up spending the rest of the period goofing off with Brittany and Blaine instead.

Brittany just has this almost neutralizing effect on me. I just turn, like, _nice_ when I'm around her. It's like I don't want her to see that I'm kind of a bitch because I'm afraid she wouldn't want to be my friend anymore and I kind of hate the thought of that. I don't even know when I started calling her my friend in my head, but through the rest of the period and even volleyball practice I just find myself following her everywhere, playing the "let me catch you off guard" game, letting her quote stupid movies at me. She has me bursting out in laughter just about every other second. I can feel Quinn's narrowed eyes on me when I interact with Brittany because I act completely different than if I were hanging out with Quinn. I'm not really sure where my mind has kind of run off to but something about her is just dizzying.

That night after dinner at Palm, I don't go to the bar because my day didn't suck. Instead, I lay awake in my bed for at least an hour, high on energy from the day, knowing that feeling like this and this whole thing in general isn't completely normal. (I'm kind of freaking out on the inside but I won't admit why.)

Even still, by the time I finally fall asleep, I still have that tiny smile tugging at the corner of my lips.

...

**AN**: Merp. I never know what to say in these. I'm pretty pissed about glee's dismissal of Brittana in the latest episode. Not to mention the biphobia.

*Whispers* I actually thought Dantana was kind of cute though. Don't judge me. Flustered Santana is adorable, let's be real.


	5. So Much Better When You're Naked

**I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked** – _I like me so much better when you're naked._

(Ida Maria)

* * *

"You're not doing it right, your fingers aren't spread out enough."

"Jesus, Quinn, you literally just told me _not_ to spread my fingers out."

"Yeah, you're not supposed to spread your hands out after you set the ball. Just -"

"Okay, well what the hell do you want from me, Fabray?"

"Santana you're setting the volleyball like you'd shoot a basketball! Yeah, you've already made the team but your form is seriously terrible. Do you want to be a sucky setter?"

"...No."

"Okay, I'm trying to help you out, so will you please shut the heck up and work with me here?"

"Damn, Fabray. Hostile."

Quinn rolls her eyes and prepares to toss me the ball again, grumbling, "Just set the ball, Santana." She tosses the ball and it falls perfectly at my hands. I try to follow what she said, but then I'm not even really sure what the fuck it is she wants me to do. Regardless, the ball smacks against my palms gracelessly and spins back towards Quinn, who catches it with an exaggerated sigh.

"Okay, just try and -"

"Quinn!" We both whip around to see Brittany jogging toward us. Quinn has been helping me with setting since we got up here and there wasn't really anyone around at the time. Now, the gym is full of girls passing back and forth. Brittany greets me with her always-rosy smile and bright eyes and turns to Quinn. "I can help her. Coach is about to have us start hitting lines so you should go lead that."

Quinn doesn't even hesitate before tossing the ball to Brittany. "Good luck." She grumbles before jogging to the net.

"You're not gonna go block?" I say as Brittany squares up to me, ball in hand.

"Nah, coach wants Marley to practice. Show me what you've got." She says, indicating for me to get ready to set the ball back to her.

"I kind of suck." I warn. Brittany shrugs. I lift my arms above my head, ready to receive a set. She tosses the ball at me, but she does it too short and at a weird, straight angle so that when I try and set it back to her, I have to lunge forward and crouch low to get my hands under it. My set back to her completely sucks; it's basically horizontal and flies straight at her head. She catches it with ease.

"Um," I say, pushing myself back up, putting my hands above my head again in preparation for another attempt. "That was kind of a bad toss." I defend. Because it was. It was pretty much impossible to set. Brittany raises her eyebrows with a 'I know, dummy' look.

"I wanted to show you that sometimes you can't get under the ball to set it. A lot of times you don't get good enough passes to set all pretty and perfect so you just have to bump it up." I nod, understanding. Brittany gestures to my raised arms. "Basically I'm telling you not to always have your hands above your head." I instantly let my hands drop to my sides.

Brittany rests the ball between her arm and her hip and starts walking toward me. "Okay, before you start setting again I want to see your form. Pretend to set a ball over there." She points to where she was standing before.

I give her a dubious glance before half-heartedly raising my arms and pretending to set the ball to where Brittany had been standing. I drop my arms and turn back to her.

She ponders me for a moment. "You set volleyballs like you're shooting a basketball."

I sigh exasperatedly. "That's exactly what Quinn said."

"Yeah, well, she's right." She shrugs. "You're also kind of, like, hitting it. Setting is supposed to be soft and cushiony. The ball shouldn't touch anything but your fingertips. And here," She sets the ball on the ground and stands behind me, gently grasping my wrists, directing my movements. (My body starts to buzz.) "When you set, your elbows are way too close together." She lifts my wrists directly upward so my arms are almost parallel to each other and my palms perpendicular to the floor. "Your elbows should be really far apart, and more like next to you instead of in front of you, like this." She tilts my wrists so that my elbows are on either side of me, as if I was frozen in the middle of doing a jumping jack, leveling my hands so they're parallel to the floor instead. I can feel her hot breath on my neck as she directs me. Suddenly she's moved her hands from my wrists to the back of my own hands, and she's spread my fingers with hers. "Extend your fingers, and don't have your hands so flat." I swallow thickly. She is way too goddamn close to me and fuck if the temperature didn't just rise in here. "Okay, good. Now stay like that."

She releases my hands and leaves her position behind me, picking up the ball and jogging to where she was standing before she totally annihilated my personal bubble. I'm still holding the position she told me to.

"I'm gonna toss you the ball, and you're just gonna catch it with your arms the way they are, okay? Catch it as close to your head as you can. Don't set it back to me."

I nod.

"Kay." She lobs the ball high and it lands perfectly cradled in my fingertips. I didn't have to move or anything.

"Perfect." She grins. "Now, push the ball up and out back to me. Think of it like a basketball pass."

I obey and push the light ball in a perfect arc that lands neatly in Brittany's hand.

"Awesome. Now try and set it and think about everything I just told you."

Brittany tosses the ball, I set it back.

She catches the ball with a wide grin and looks over her shoulder. "GUYS, LOOK!" She turns back to me, along with everyone in the gym, ready to throw the ball back to me to show everyone my newfound ability to set. Okay, that's perfect. No pressure here. She must be able to read my initial insecurity, so she reassures me, "You just gave me a perfect set. Do exactly what you just did."

She tosses the ball to me again, and the ball floats back to her in a beautiful, long arc. Nee and some other girls cheer and whoop for me.

Quinn, standing in line to hit with the other girls, watches us. "How did you get her to -? Ugh." She waves her hands dramatically with an eyeroll. "Congratulations on taming the beast, Brittany!"

I give Quinn my best withering glare, maybe proving her statement right, before turning back to Brittany.

"Okay, let's see you hustle." She flashes a slightly evil grin.

Brittany has me running every which way to try and set volleyballs back to her, which means lots of digging and screeching on the gym floor. After that I'm given extensive serving coaching from Nee - so far there's minimal success in that field – and then practice is let out. (Part of me wonders if I'd be better at serving if Brittany had been coaching me.) And seriously I never knew volleyball could cause someone to sweat so damn much. I grab my nalgene and wipe my forehead and I'm about to head out of the gym and down to the locker room when Nee motions to me from outside the coaches' office.

"Varsity meeting!"

I sigh, slinging the bottle over my shoulder before wedging my way into the crowd of twelve sweating teenaged girls that are cramped into the small office.

"Okay, ladies!" I hear Quinn call. "I think we can be really good this year. I see a lot of old faces," she gestures next to her to Brittany and some other girls who I assume must be returners, "and some new faces." She smiles at me through the small crowd. "And I'm really excited for us all to get to know each other and become a team. So," she puts on this obnoxiously big smile and I mean Jesus her mouth is fucking huge, "as per tradition, I wanted to invite all of you over to my house on Saturday after practice for a sleepover."

Brittany whoops next to Quinn. "Yeah buddy!"

"We're gonna watch movies, maybe play games, hang out..." she grins conspiratorially at all of us, "maybe go on a little midnight excursion..." Some of the girls laugh and I just narrow my eyes because what the fuck does that mean? "And then we can all go to church together the next day. So, ask your dorm parents, parents, all that. Please bring a sleeping bag and a pillow if you can. If you don't have one come talk to me. Um..." She gives Nee a glance. "Is there anything else...?"

"We're gonna order Chinese!" Brittany cuts in.

"Right! Yeah, we're ordering dinner once we get to my house. You don't need to bring money, it's all in the budget. Just give us your order by tomorrow." A pause. "I think that's it. You guys can go."

I wait for the other girls to leave and exit next to Brittany.

"What does," I put my fingers up in air quotes, "'midnight excursion' mean?" I ask, but I already kind of know the answer. My initial suspicion is confirmed when she turns to me and gives me an impish grin.

"If it's too cold we'll just streak around town." My eyes widen slightly. So does her grin. "But if it's warm enough we'll break into the Kandern pool and go skinny dipping."

"You're going to break into something?" I whisper harshly. "I thought you all were, like, good Christians and stuff."

She waves me off. "They make it so easy to sneak into, though. Like it's hard to even feel bad. Plus, it's not like we're stealing or breaking stuff or anything." I look at her dubiously. "Look, if you're worried about getting caught, don't be. No one's ever gotten in trouble for it. It's fine."

"I'm not worried about getting in trouble." I huff.

"Alright." Brittany says in a singsong voice.

(I'm worried about something else.)

* * *

Through the rest of Thursday and Friday, in the midst of the whirlwind of getting used to dorm life, getting used to the unusually large work load in school, and getting used to how goddamn_ weird_ this place kind of is, the back of my mind is a little preoccupied and focused on this whole 'midnight excursion' that everyone's been so excited about. So I'm halfway through wondering for the thousandth time if _maybe I should just say I don't want to go with them, but then I'll look like a total loser, but everyone is weirdly nice here so it can't hurt that much to say I don't want to go, but -_

"Santana!" I jerk my head up just in time to be greeted with a stinging face full of volleyball. I lose my balance and fall to the floor.

"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry!" Brittany ducks under the net and rushes to me. "Are you okay?" I hear coach blow the whistle on the sideline. It's not that I wasn't paying attention in the middle of a scrimmage, I swear. I mean, yeah, I was kind of thinking about something else but I was still in the game. I just wasn't expecting to get spiked in the face while standing almost right next to the net. I look at where I'm sitting and where Brittany's hit came from. The angle on that hit was crazy.

"That was awesome." I say to Brittany in slight awe, unconsciously clutching my eye. Some of the girls on the court chuckle at my response. Brittany ignores me and gently brushes my hand out of the way. She lightly touches my temple, intently examining my face and kind of getting way up in my grill.

"Did it hit your eye?" She's so close that I can see the tanned freckles lightly sprinkled on her nose.

"It, u-um," I stammer, feeling like the huge gym just got way smaller. Goddamn it. I fucking stammered. Again. I roll my eyes. "I don't know, it's fine, it's just a volleyball." I gently grasp her wrist, forcing her hand from my face. I look away and push myself up from the floor.

"It looked like it hit pretty hard." She protests lightly, still looking concerned, taking a step back as I get up.

I grin coyly, "I think you're giving your hits too much credit." Which I'm actually totally not giving her hits enough credit because _fuck_ that stings and I'm actually a little worried that my face has already started to swell up because I can't even feel it. I gingerly touch the skin around my right eye. Brittany is looking at me dubiously.

"Are you alright?" Coach cuts in brassily with a raised brow, her tracksuit-clad arms crossed.

"Yeah, I'm good."

"Then let's keep playing." Brittany ducks back under the net, still looking apologetically at me, as Coach whips out her megaphone. "LADIES THIS SATURDAY PRACTICE IS VERY IMPORTANT. LET'S STAY FOCUSED."

We continue scrimmaging and I continue worrying that my face is a little fucked up. After again sweating a surprising amount, nervously touching my eye a little more, and acquiring a blooming new bruise on my knee from diving for a terrible pass from Nee, Coach sits us in a circle in the middle of the gym. And to be honest, she's really damn intimidating. Instead of sitting with the rest of us, she decides to slowly circle around us like we're her prey, her megaphone held behind her back. I feel like I'm playing a creeping, tense game of Duck, Duck, Goose as she asks us to talk about what we want our team goals to be for the season. There's the obvious ones like, I don't know, _winning_, but then there are weird ones that Quinn and Nee suggest like 'reaching out' to one person from an opposing team every weekend. I resist the urge to roll my eyes.

About halfway through all the sentimental shit about being a 'beacon' to other teams and other crap, I see our two managers - one is an Asian girl with scarce blonde highlights in her hair, and the other is a short blonde girl who I've assumed at this point has Down's Syndrome. They're carrying in boxes which they reveal to be the sets of blue and white jerseys and warm ups. Everyone starts craning their heads to watch as the managers lay out each jersey.

Coach sighs in frustration. "All right, since you're all clearly enamored with our discussion, let's get our gear checked out. Seniors," She whistles and gestures with a wave of her arm for us to go over to the piles of clothes. Brittany bolts up first, rushing to grab what I later see to be number eleven. Quinn takes number seven, which somehow makes perfect sense. I'm the only other senior, left staring a little blankly at all the remaining jerseys. I've never had to choose a jersey number, obviously, being a cheerleader. I end up just grabbing number twenty-one because it reminds me of how I'll finally be a damn adult when I can legally order a Blue Moon at a bar in the United States of fucking America. And also because it looks like it will fit me.

We're let out of practice once everyone has their gear and I enter the locker room behind the crowd of girls, heading straight to the mirror to evaluate how fucked up my face may or may not be. It's pretty tender. I mean volleyballs really don't do that much damage - if a basketball had flown at my face at the same speed, I might have a broken nose or a gash on my eyebrow or even a pretty serious eye injury. So far, though, it seems like it's just a little swollen with the start of light bruising appearing around my eye. As I keep looking at it I notice Brittany in the mirror, coming through the locker room door behind me. She stops once she sees me.

"How is it, is it bad?" Her brows are scrunched together, and she looks like she just feels completely terrible about what she accidentally did. I turn to face her with a reassuring smile.

"It's really not that bad." There's that dubious look again. "I'm telling you, you overestimate your skills." I smirk at her, brushing past her to enter the changing area. The smirk immediately falls from my face when I walk in, and I freeze in my tracks.

Somehow I'd neglected to piece together a few facts. One: after this particular practice we would all need to shower before going to Quinn's. Two: everyone here has this weird thing about being totally comfortable being bare ass naked around other bare ass naked girls.

So, yeah, I'm met with the sight of a lot of boobs and bare asses that I was completely and totally unprepared for. Brittany nudges my shoulder as she passes my tense body, giving me the same smirk I was just giving her.

"All good, Santana?"

I give her a glare that I don't really mean before I try to weave my way through the crowd of undressing bodies without touching anyone. Unfortunately the locker room is really goddamn small and I end up grazing more bare skin than I really would have preferred to.

I strip down as quickly and discreetly as I can once I get to my stuff, wrapping my towel around myself, grabbing my shampoo and conditioner and all of that. When I walk into the shower area it gets weirder. The shower stalls have curtains, right? None of the girls fucking use them. They're just all naked and talking to each other and laughing, and one of the stalls I walk past actually has _two_ girls crammed into it - Nee and Kristen. And, like, the stalls are fucking tiny.

This is seriously not fucking normal. My throat is kind of dry, and I notice my hands slightly tremoring again. Thankfully, the last stall on the left is empty and for a second I consider following the crowd by not closing the curtain, then immediately decide against it. It turns out to be just my luck, though, that _my_ shower stall's curtain is hanging by just one hook, and really isn't much of a curtain at all, even if I close it. I grit my teeth to keep myself from audibly growling.

Whatever.

I violently fling my towel over the fucking useless curtain rod, turning the shower on to scalding hot, and start washing my body. Back in the changing area, I hear speakers begin to blare "Take It Off" by Ke$ha. I shake my head. Damn it, Brittany.

I'm running water through my hair when it happens, and somehow, my mind kind of prepared me for it and I just _knew_ it was coming.

"Can I jump in with you?" A voice says from behind me, and my heart both drops to my stomach and leaps into my throat. It's Brittany.

"Yeah." I croak as I rinse my face, my heart rate increasing. I'm not really sure how this works, though. Do we both stand in the stall even when one isn't using the water? I guess that was what Nee and Kristen were doing, now that I think about it. I must stand there too long wondering if I'm supposed to do anything, because I hear Brittany behind me.

"So, can I...?" I turn (look at her face, look at her face) to see her nodding to the showerhead.

"Yeah, sorry." I move out of the way for her to step under the stream of water. I start scrubbing shampoo into my hair to keep myself occupied. Brittany's eyes close as she lifts her arms to run the water through her hair and over her face, tilting her body back, her ribs raising and water running down in threads over her body, twisting around her pink nipples as her (oh my god stop looking, don't look, stop).

I tear my gaze away, clamping my eyes shut as I lather the suds into my hair. A minute passes before Brittany speaks again.

"Here." She steps out from under the stream, grabbing her own bottle of shampoo. I slide past her (don't touch her, don't touch her) and start rinsing the shampoo from my hair. Once the shampoo is pretty much gone I step out again to let Brittany rinse, roughly rubbing my eyes clear of water. But then I wasn't really thinking when I started doing that because remember how I got hit in the eye a few hours ago?

I hiss. "Ow, shit."

This grabs Brittany's attention as water streams through her own hair. She pauses and looks at me.

"Oh my gosh, you're bruising." Her voice almost sounds like a whine. She takes a few steps away from the water, steps that are coming towards me. If I thought there was any kind of respect for personal boundaries in this place I was just totally and completely fucking wrong because now she's standing _way _too fucking close and she's (oh my god) fucking _touching my face_ and we're both _completely naked and how the actual fuck is this normal. This can absolutely not be fucking normal._ "Crap, I feel really bad."

A quiet, incoherent gurgle escapes my throat.

At this point, I've given up on trying to look her in the eye. I'm just staring off to the right as she examines my eye for _way_ fucking longer than should be acceptable when both individuals are stark-ass naked. I clear my throat, trying to make myself as normal as possible.

"I'm seriously fine. I'm a big girl, I'll live."

"I know, I just feel bad." She steps back under the showerhead, continuing to let the water run over her. "Maybe we should put some ice on it once we get to Quinn's." She suggests. The space doesn't seem so small anymore now that she's moved away from me. I can't really help but notice that, like, seriously, her stomach is like super toned and really she just has like the perfect body. (I'm really trying not to look, I swear to god.)

I force my eyes closed again as I start scrubbing my face, careful to be gentle around my eye. In the background I hear the music change to "Hold It Against Me." Of course.

"Why twenty-one?" I hear Brittany ask.

It takes me a second to realize she's talking about my jersey number. I shrug. "I didn't really know what to pick. Never had to choose a jersey number before." I feel her tap my shoulder signaling for my turn under the showerhead. "Why eleven? You pretty much bolted to get it before anyone else."

She takes too long to answer so I bite the bullet and look at her. She has this weird little shy smile that I've never seen before tugging at her lips as she combs conditioner into her hair.

"It's dumb." She insists quietly.

"Come on, I bet it's not dumb."

We switch places again and I start conditioning my hair. "No, for real," She laughs, "It's stupid."

"Brittany," I say seriously, "I swear to god I'm not gonna think it's dumb."

We make eye contact for a moment and suddenly the loud music and girls laughing and yelling and showers running quiet down. She seems to believe me and sighs.

"When I was a kid, I always felt really bad for the number one." She explains. "Like, it was just one. Two had two ones and three had three ones, and they could all hang out together. But one had just one one so it was just alone all the time." She pauses for a second to see how I'm responding. "I know it doesn't really make any sense, but -"

"It does." I say. "Keep going."

She smiles at me again before continuing. "I remember saying something to my mom about it when I got home from school one day, like, 'one must be really sad because it's lonely.' So to make me feel better, she said to me, 'Brittany, honey, one gets paired with other numbers all the time, like when it's sixteen, it gets to hang out with six!'" She laughs. "And obviously that's not how numbers work at all and it actually kind of screwed me up in math class, because I thought that sixteen was like one _plus_ six. I wasn't the brightest bulb." She shakes her head with a self-deprecating smile. "Anyway, so I decided that my favorite number was eleven, because that way one could hang out with another one, and they understood each other because they were both ones. And they wouldn't be lonely anymore." She shrugs. "So eleven has always just been my number, ever since."

For a moment I completely forget that she's bare-ass naked as she finishes telling me her story. It's weird to me that she hates talking about herself because everything that comes out of her mouth is just so damn _interesting_. The way she thinks and operates is so different from anyone I've ever met and I kind of want to ask her every question that exists just to watch the way it travels through her brain.

She notices me staring at her, and whatever look I'm giving her makes her blink away shyly as she steps out and starts drying herself.

She clears her throat. "Plus, you know. It's a cool-sounding word. 'Eleven.'" She drawls elegantly. "Just rolls off the tongue. It's kinda sexy."

"A sexy number, huh?" I laugh, raising a brow. She wraps her towel around her head and starts collecting her stuff.

"Numbers can be sexy. Twenty-one is sexy." She smirks at me with a challenging eyebrow, and suddenly I'm all too aware that she's naked again. Of course she doesn't bother using her one towel to cover her body. Nope, use it on the hair. Hair's gotta dry. Goddamn it. "Thanks for letting me jump in with you." She says before making her way back to the changing area. I watch her leave.

I'm not super keen on the idea of anyone else trying to jump into my stall with me so I quickly finish up and go back out to get dressed. I've just finished hooking my bra when a new song starts to play and I hear someone screech from the showers,

"This is my JAAAAAAM!" It's Nee.

Brittany perks up as well. "Yeahhh!"

I can hear clamoring in the showers and Nee stumbles out with her towel haphazardly wrapped around her head, just in time to sing along:

_"All the clever..."_

Brittany is using her brush as a microphone. She's not completely naked anymore, thank god.

_"Things I should say to you! They got stuck somewhere..."_

I think I hear Quinn start singing from the shower as well.

_"Stuck between me and you! Oh, I'm nervous..."_

I see Kristen walk out with a towel around her body, singing along with a smile.

_"I don't know what to do!"_

I laugh as the entire room full of girls in various states of undress starts to join in. Eventually I'm the only one not singing since, well, I don't know the song. Nee notices and nods to Brittany, who grins. They both rush over to me and start singing at me as the bridge starts.

_"Well I won't mi-i-i-i-i-i-i-ind if you take me home, come on take me home,"_

I raise my eyebrows with an uncontrollable grin, and more girls join them in singing at me. Brittany's eyes are sparkling as she sings into her makeshift microphone.

_"I won't mi-i-i-i-i-i-i-ind if you take off all your clothes, come on take them off." _I can't hold in my laughter any longer as literally everyone in the room points at me.

_"'Cause I like you so much better when you're naked!"_

"Oh my god." I manage through my laughter.

Someone starts banging a bench in time to the music. _"I like me so much better when you're naked! I like you so much better when you're naked! I like me so much better when you're naked, yeah!"_ After the chorus ends everyone starts going back to whatever they were doing before the sudden musical outburst, still jamming along with the song in their own way. Brittany bumps my hip with hers in time to the beat before she walks back to her stuff as well. I laugh again, shaking my head as I watch Nee and Kristen still singing at each other. I hate to admit it, but Quinn was kind of right, the upbeat mood here is pretty contagious.

When everyone is dressed and ready, we make the 5-minute walk over to Quinn's house. She gets me an ice pack as soon as we get there. My eye must look shittier than I thought.

We pile into her living room and eat dinner while watching one of the Step Up movies. I'm not sure which one it is – I can't keep track of them anymore. Brittany clarifies for everyone, though.

"We're watching Step Up 2: The Streets. The one with the jerk boyfriend from She's the Man."

I shake my head at her with a little smile. Of course she would know.

Quinn's mom comes in from time to time to check up on us and bring us snacks, joking with us and trying to be all 'cool mom.' After that we play party games like Never Have I Ever except there's no alcohol and it's totally lame. It's also totally lame because everyone's goddamn twelve years old and says stupid shit like 'never have I ever had a crush on Blaine Anderson,' to which almost every girl in the room takes a sip of her very much non-alcoholic Apfelschorle. The tall freshman, Marley, decides to do 'never have I ever been in love with someone' like, come on. You're fourteen. (I notice that Brittany takes a drink.)

Eventually Quinn's parents tell us they're going to bed. When we hear their door close for the final time Quinn turns to everyone.

"Let's get ready for bed now so we're not super noisy when we get back." It's nearing midnight, so it must be about 'that time.' We start laying our sleeping bags out on various surfaces - I'm laying my own in some remote corner of the living room when Kristen walks by.

"What are you doing?" She asks, muffled by the toothbrush in her mouth. I turn to her and raise my eyebrows like _what the fuck does it look like I'm doing?_ "Seniors always sleep in the bed. It's tradition." She explains. "Be glad there's only three of you. A few years ago there were seven seniors. It was kind of crazy."

Behind Kristen I see Quinn and Brittany come through the doorway, scanning the room before motioning for me to come with them. As I approach them, Quinn says, "Sorry, I forgot to tell you."

I wave her off. After I toss my pillow onto Quinn's queen sized bed, everyone convenes in the living room. Quinn had said something earlier about changing into clothes that can easily be taken on and off, so pretty much everyone is just in their pajamas. Brittany is wearing a yellow tank with a picture of that dog from Adventure Time and gray sweatpants. I am a hundred percent sure that no one else on the planet could wear the stuff she wears and look, well, hot.

"I think it's warm enough to go to the pool." Nee says, nodding at Quinn. "Don't you think?"

"Yeah." She grins.

"I'm so excited!" Brittany says, bouncing on her feet, grinning at me. I smile back a little weakly.

It's really a wonder the entire town doesn't wake up as we skip and giggle the long way through town. I don't do much skipping or giggling, playing the part of 'I'm too cool for this childish bullshit' when in reality I'm just kind of nervous about it. I'll admit it, okay? I've never really done anything like this. It doesn't help that Quinn and Nee are taking pictures the entire walk with their super ghetto digital cameras - another side effect of no one having smartphones. They stop us like five different times to do self-timer group shots. I would have snapped at them by now if it weren't for Brittany scampering up next to me about halfway through the walk, hooking her arm into mine. This puts me in a slightly better mood and I kind of start to join in on the fun.

Quinn is the first to slide between the bars of the full-height turnstile that guards the front entrance to the pool. She slips in with ease, although slightly noisily. We all wordlessly follow, making just as much of a creaky ruckus as we squeeze through the bars. Brittany was right, it's hard to feel bad about sneaking in when it's so easy to do it.

There are two outdoor pools - a shallow one with a slide and a current, and an olympic sized one with two diving boards to the side. We make our way over to the olympic sized pool, trying to stifle excited giggles and be as quiet as possible.

Somehow I'm _still_ not completely prepared when everyone just starts stripping and tossing their clothes and shoes onto the ground. I not about to be the odd one out, so I start stripping as well. I'm kind of glad I already had the naked experience earlier today and got the initial awkwardness out of the way. I mean, it's still pretty fucking awkward. For me, anyway.

"Make separate piles for clothes!" Someone whispers in the midst of all the stripping.

"This is so awesome!" Another girl whispers excitedly.

"Picture!" Nee squeals, a little louder than necessary. I snap my head up to Nee with wide eyes. At this point everyone's naked.

"Are you fucking serious?" I whisper harshly, incredulous. Some girls glance at me when I say 'fucking.'

"Just the feet." I hear Brittany assure me a few feet away as Nee sets her camera on the ground, putting it on another self-timer. She positions it so that only our legs up to our mid-thighs will be visible.

"Make sure everyone's in."

"Brittany!"

"Ow, I just stepped on something."

"Scoot over." Someone nudges me.

"Okay!" I squeak. "Let's not touch too much seeing as we're naked and everything."

_Flash._

We all scatter after the photo is taken, and girls start to quietly slide into the pool. Unfortunately, I don't take into account the fact that as I'm standing at the edge, toeing the _fucking freezing_ water, Brittany is standing right behind me. I mean, I knew she was behind me, I just didn't think she'd -

I shriek as I feel hands shove me into the water with an ungraceful splash. I come up sputtering.

"Jesus, fuck that's cold!"

I hear Brittany stifling her laughter, then another big splash next to me. Had it been just about anyone else, I would have gone all Lima Heights on their ass, but it's Brittany. I don't think anyone could ever be mad at her - not even me.

"Brittany!" Quinn whispers harshly, scolding her as she surfaces. "You're gonna get us caught!"

"Oh, lighten up, grandma." I retort as I splash Brittany lightly with a grin. Quinn huffs.

I feel better about the whole naked thing since we're all underwater and you can't really see anything anyway. Swimming in the dark is actually super weird and a little scary, if I'm honest. If you open your eyes underwater it's just a hazy void of nothingness, and it seems like the depth could go on forever.

"Hey Santana!" Brittany says to me, grinning, making sure everyone can hear. "Has anyone ever told you your boobs are awesome?"

I grin back and reply just as loudly, "Listen, Brittany, I know you think my boobs are great. You don't need to keep telling me."

She laughs and splashes me in response.

We all tread the water for a few more minutes, some of the girls still giggling for absolutely no fucking reason. I float around on my back in the middle of the pool, Brittany not too far from me, looking up at the clear night sky. I think I kind of love this, just as long as I don't duck underwater into the ocean-like void. It's peaceful. Maybe I'll sneak in here again by myself some night. At the edge of the pool, Nee and Kristen are still giggling for no reason, and start to make even more noise when they splash giant waves at one another.

"Maybe we are a little loud." Brittany says next to me.

"But it's not like we'll get caught, right?" I say.

Jinx.

You know that part in the third Lord of the Rings, when the gay hobbits are almost at Mount Doom or whatever and they're trying to sneak by the tower with Sauron's eye? And suddenly, for whatever reason, the eye turns and is, like, shining directly on Frodo, and he's just stunned and it's kind of blinding and he's not really sure what to do so he just kind of flops to the ground?

This moment? Exactly like that one.

It's like someone turned on a spotlight and put it directly on us.

"Oh, shit!" I hiss, and immediately dunk my head underwater. Now, sometimes I'm just not the brightest bulb, and that's fine. For some reason I figure that my best option is to stay underwater until whoever has this spotlight leaves. Clearly not my best plan. It's barely four seconds before I resurface, gasping. Everyone else is in kind of a panic, scrambling to exit the pool. I quickly follow suit.

The light from outside the fence is still fucking shining right where we're standing as we scramble to wetly put our clothes on, underwear sticking and t-shirts inside out. Quinn stumbles to the ground as her wet toes get stuck somewhere in her sweats. If I wasn't so freaked out, the image of a bunch of girls scrambling to clothe themselves under a bright spotlight would be fucking hilarious. But, I'm totally freaked out, so it's not really that funny. I growl in frustration as my t-shirt sticks to my body awkwardly and I struggle to get it to settle like a normal goddamn shirt.

"Fuck this." I say, giving up on my wet shirt. Instead, I pick up what I hope is all of the rest of my clothes and hold them to my chest. "I can't get arrested again. I say we just book it."

Brittany is next to me, and I see a flash of curiosity in her eyes at my words before resolve replaces it and she nods, agreeing. We both start to run out, my bare ass hanging out, and the rest of the girls follow us. Quinn only managed to get her underwear on, Brittany skipped underwear completely and only has her sweats on, and everyone else is in some kind of similar half-dressed state as we make it to the front gate. Trying not to make noise is out the window at this point as we squeeze back through the bars. I hear a man yelling at us in German, the light quickly coming closer to us from outside the gate.

"Fuck! Shit!" I screech.

"Come on, run." Brittany grabs my arm, taking off in the opposite direction. We sprint as fast as we can as far away from the yelling as we can, haphazardly trying to hold all our clothes together. It doesn't even phase me at this point that we're in a public place where anyone could see us naked. Eventually, once we can't hear yelling anymore, Brittany stops near a broken street lamp in a somewhat secluded spot.

I whip around to her, heaving. "I thought you said not to worry about being caught!"

Everyone else catches up to us and I watch Brittany breathing raggedly from running for a moment before she bursts into a fit of laughter, which quickly spreads to all the other girls. I kind of want to be upset with her, but I honestly can't help but join in. It _is_ kind of funny. Now.

"Oh my gosh." Nee giggles as everyone finishes dressing. "That was so crazy, you guys."

"I know, I'm still like shaking." Quinn says, holding her hand out so we can see as it tremors slightly.

"You guys, this is going to be the best story ever." Brittany smiles hugely as she pulls her tank top over her head.

"Yeah, pretty much." Someone says.

"Did you guys see Quinn fall over?" One of the girls laughs.

Nee starts giggling again. "Oh my gosh, the image of her hopping around trying to put her pants on with that light shining on her is always going to be ingrained into my brain. I wish I had a picture so I could frame it on my wall."

"Shut up." Quinn shoves Nee good-naturedly as all of us laugh.

When we get back to Quinn's, everyone sneaks to their respective sleeping bags as quietly as they can, while Quinn, Brittany and I sneak into the bedroom.

"Okay," I say as once we settle under the blankets. Brittany volunteered to take the middle spot, Quinn and I on either side of her. "That was actually pretty fun."

"See, I told you." Brittany nudges me then turns to Quinn. "She's going to be a naked one before we know it."

I laugh, shaking my head. "I wouldn't be so sure."

"I'm totally sure." Brittany says with a smile as she turns onto her side, facing me. She studies me for a moment before she closes her eyes and sighs contentedly. "Goodnight Quinn. Goodnight Santana."

"Goodnight." I respond quietly.

It takes me awhile before I start to feel like I'm drifting to sleep. Brittany and Quinn's breathing evened out long ago, and actually, Brittany is starting to snore just the slightest. It's kind of cute. _She's just kind of cute_, I think carelessly as my half-open eyes drift over her barely-visible features, falling more and more closed with each blink.

(And even though I can feel Brittany's warmth right next to me, she must not be close enough because she still manages her way into my dreams that night.)

...

**A****N: **Hey friends, just a note for those of you who followed this fic before I re-uploaded, things after this chapter are going to start changing a little – probably not enough that you'll need to re-read them but if something seems off that might be why. Chapter 8 will be an actual new-new chapter.

Thankssss bye.


	6. Lasso

**Lasso** - _Don't you know? Don't do it __what you do, oh what you do to me._

(Phoenix)

* * *

Puck takes a sip of his second beer of the night, leaving a thin line of white foam on his upper lip.

"So how's our bet going?" He says, turning to me.

Oh, right, I'm supposed to be seducing Blaine. I realize I literally haven't even thought about the bet since we started it as the bartender slides my own beer over. I take a gulp, sporting a matching white mustache.

"I haven't been trying very hard." I shrug, wiping my upper lip. "But he's always hanging out with me, so I must be doing something right." I smirk at him.

"Oh please," He scoffs. "You eat lunch in the same group, and you don't even talk to each other. That doesn't count."

"Well how's 'Operation Seduce Fabray' going?" I huff, crossing my arms. "Clearly awesome, since she's all over Frankenteen all the fucking time."

He winces. "Yeah, that's actually kind of why I brought it up. I might have to back out. I'd be breaking serious bro code if I try and bag her while they're together."

I raise my eyebrows incredulously. "Wait, what? You actually care? They're not even technically dating, screw the bro code." I say, taking another sip.

He shifts on his stool, sighing. "No can do, lady. Anyway, so how's CAG treating you? You're almost two weeks in at this point."

"Don't change the subject, Puckerman." I accuse, pointing my finger at him. "You're still buying all my grad night drinks if I take Blaine's v-card. Which I will."

"Honestly I'm not worried. He's never gonna give it to you." He waves me off. I raise a brow at him. "But fine, okay? I won't back out."

I give him another stern look before answering his previous question. "Well, I _am _sitting at a bar with you, drinking all my troubles away. What does that tell you about how CAG is treating me?"

Puck just sits there silently for a moment with a brow raised, waiting for me to elaborate as he sips his beer. I then think better of what I said, which wouldn't have happened if I wasn't already almost two beers and a couple shots in.

"You know, actually, no. I mean yeah, the culture here is fucking weird, like how it's cool to be uncool, or how everyone here is a prude about seriously everything but then at the same time there's the naked thing, which kind of freaks me out," I say. He nods like _yeah that's understandable_. "But I think I might, I don't know." I shrug. "I'm starting to like it."

Puck's eyebrows shoot up. "Wait, seriously?"

"Yeah, I mean I'm already a head bitch here, so why wouldn't I like it?"

"Uh, because it's full of two-faced hypocrites who really need to get laid? And also the key word there is _bitch_ because that's what everyone here thinks you are."

I ignore most of what he said and instead skeptically look at him over my beer. "You know what hypocrite means?"

He lightly whacks my arm. "Shut up. But seriously dude, how are you not dying here?"

I shrug again. "Maybe everyone here isn't like that, you know?"

He gives me a skeptical look. "You hang out with _Quinn_. She's, like, the ultimate two-faced hypocrite who really needs to get laid. She's actually their queen." He takes another sip, mumbling, "Trust me, I know."

"I'm not talking about Quinn." I shake my head.

"Then who are you talking about?"

"I don't know," I focus on my glass, wiping patterns in the condensation with my finger. "I mean Brittany's pretty cool."

Puck's face morphs from a pondering look into a pervy smirk, which he's wearing way too proudly. Gross.

"Ew, you're such a perv." I punch his bicep, harder than necessary.

"Ow, I didn't even say anything." He says. "That actually kind of hurt." He frowns, rubbing his arm.

"Yeah, Britt told me the other day that there's like an exposed nerve in the middle of your upper arm that hurts a lot when punched. Been meaning to try it out."

He gives me this weird look for several seconds, still clutching his arm.

"What?" I say defensively.

"Why Brittany?" Puck questions, tilting his head.

"Why Brittany _what?" _I narrow my eyes.

"Why did you latch onto Brittany?" He clarifies.

"I didn't latch onto _anything._" I snap, glaring at him.

"Look don't get me wrong, she's cooler than most people here, and even though she has the style and interests of a five-year-old, she's a total freak in the sheets." My jaw clenches. "But she's just so..." He waves his hands vaguely.

"So what?" I demand.

"She's kind of... an airhead." He shrugs. "Like how does she not annoy the shit out of you? Especially _you_."

I punch his arm again, even harder. "She's not a fucking airhead, Noah."

"Jesus, will you stop it?"

I ignore him and take another gulp of my drink.

"It's kind of true, though." He says. "She gets worse grades than _me_ and you and I both know I'm not the brightest. And have you heard some of the shit that comes out of her mouth?"

"Have you heard some of the shit that comes out of _your _mouth?" I snap back at him.

"Whoa." He throws his hands up in defense. "Stop freaking out."

"I'm not freaking out." I bite before I down the rest of my beer and slam the glass onto the wood of the bar.

"Uh, yeah. You are." He says, shaking his head as he studies me. "You're like really worked up, when was the last time you got laid?"

"I am _not_ fucking worked up, _fuck off_." I growl.

He raises his brows at me as if I just proved his point, which I did. "Well to be fair," He downs the rest of his beer as well, smirking, "I'd be worked up too if I was constantly around a bunch of naked girls."

My stomach drops. (He was joking, it was a joke, he doesn't know. It was a joke.) I refuse to meet his eyes and say through gritted teeth, "You're hilarious, Noah."

Puck doesn't notice. "I know." He says, shrugging. "But hey, listen, if you need to relieve some of that tension…" I feel him nudge my arm with his elbow and I'm sure he's giving me a pervy wink. "We could go back to my place, my mom's out of town."

I keep my stony gaze on the empty glass before turning to him. I can't even muster a sarcastic smile and I just end up giving him a cold glare. He retreats slightly, the wry grin on his face instantly disappearing. Instead of responding, I toss down a crumpled up ten euro bill - I'm not even sure that'll cover me, but Puck will manage just fine if it doesn't - and throw on my leather jacket, preparing to leave.

"Okay, that's a no." Puck says with a slightly bewildered expression.

"Go fuck yourself." I say coldly, sliding off the barstool and walking out.

I can hear him call after me, which garners the attention of everyone else in the bar. "Calm the fuck down, are you serious? We can just hang out–"

The door closes behind me. _What a fucking tool_. I violently zip up my jacket, staggering slightly as I make the walk into the night air and back to my dorm.

I squeeze through the sliding door to my room – at least I'm pretty sure it's my room. I've maybe already drunkenly stumbled into the room next to mine by mistake since I've been here. It was Rachel's room. Really, it's one of my proudest moments.

The first thing I do is open my laptop and send Brittany a Facebook message. After a week of stalking her profile and waiting for her to add me as a friend, I bit the bullet and did it myself. It's kind of a pain in the ass to only be able to communicate through facebook, and not just through texting like normal fucking people. My life was so much easier in the States.

_fuckin puckerman is driving me nuts. hes gonna want to cuddle and make pancakes with me soon_

Close computer. Go to sleep.

* * *

Every morning out of habit – after I slam my alarm clock to silence – the first thing I do is check my phone for texts or notifications. I'm disappointed every time. I really just need to fucking put it away somewhere, since at this point it's just a $500 device for playing solitaire and candy crush.

I groan and instead flip over to check my computer. The administrator blocks pretty much any website that's worth anything, and everyone's logged into their own specific account when they're online so they can see pretty much wherever I go anyway. It's balls.

Nothing back from Brittany, but there is a message from one Rachel Barbra Berry. I groan. The message was sent at like 5AM.

"You can't be fucking serious."

_Good morning Santana! I was just wondering if you wanted to meet up for a lunch date next Friday? _

I mean really? That's a week from now. What high school student plans their lunches that far ahead. Seriously. Who.

_I'd love to hear about how your first couple weeks of CAG have been! I'm hoping you're doing well. I know we got off on kind of a strange foot but I'm really eager to be good friends this year! You can let me know this whenever you'd like if you have that lunch period free. _:)

_Sincerely,_

_Rachel_

"This fucking place." I mutter. I shake my head at the computer screen, legitimately feeling more nauseous than I was a minute ago, just from reading that fucking nonsense. I close the screen without replying and get up to get ready for school. "So gross."

So every Friday they have this like forty-minute Chapel period crammed into the regular schedule, shortening the rest of the classes, and it's basically just casual church. It completely fucks up my day so that I have study hall after lunch instead of before, which means I can't just sign out and then just skip town with Brittany for an hour and a half. I have to come back and sign out or I'm absent. Which, I probably wouldn't really care, but I'm betting Britt does.

And apparently they expect us to sit on the fucking floor, because there's no chairs out. I notice people on the stage setting up instruments and wires and stuff, so we're probably going to hold hands and sing kumbaya at some point. Blaine is front and center, adjusting the height on his mic stand while the Asian girl that manages the volleyball team is crouched next to the piano, and Quinn's Frankentool non-boyfriend is sitting behind the drums. Sam is tuning his acoustic guitar on the right side of the stage when he looks up and notices me and waves from across the auditorium with a smile spread across his gargantuan lips.

"Hey, Santana!"

I raise my eyebrows in acknowledgement as he sets the guitar on its stand and hops off the stage to greet me. I cross my arms.

"You're early." He says, "Study hall?"

"No, art. She let us out early."

"Oh that's right, you have study hall with Brittany."

I nod. "Yeah, she told you?"

"Well yeah, she talks about you a lot, I mean you've been hanging out like all the time since you came. She thinks you're pretty much the coolest."

I grin just slightly. "Well you can tell her I think _she's_ the coolest."

"Sure thing." He laughs before his eyes focus on something behind me. "Or I could just let you tell her yourself."

"Tell me what?"

I shriek, jumping at Britt's voice, which is literally right by my ear. She laughs at my reaction.

"You scared the crap out of me." I say, shaking my head.

I can feel her warm breath on my cheek as she chuckles, "Sorry." And she's still right next to my ear, except now she's resting her chin on my shoulder and her arms have snaked their way around my stomach, hugging me from behind. I swallow thickly. I've kind of started to get used to this whole lack of personal boundaries thing, especially when it comes to Brittany because she _really_ has no personal boundaries. Key phrase there being _kind of_.

"No but really." She says. "Tell me what?"

"Just about my plans for world domination." Sam jokes, grabbing Brittany's hand and pulling her away from me. "I'm going to start collecting my minions for when I'm King of the world. You would be my queen, obviously." He says affectionately, kissing her temple. Puke. I can't help the slight eye roll. They don't notice.

"What about Santana?" Brittany giggles, playing with the hem of Lips' t-shirt. Seriously, gag. This is so not something I want to watch.

"Sam!" Blaine calls from the stage before Lips can decide what my place in the world would be were he the King of it. It looks like everything's set up on stage, and the auditorium is starting to fill with students and faculty.

"Lunch today?" Lips looks down at Brittany hopefully.

"Sorry." She says, gesturing to me. "We're going to Hiebers for brötchen. Maybe next week?"

I can't help the slightly smug look that appears on my face.

"Yeah, sure. Later, babe." He says, and hugs Brittany for way longer than is necessary thank you very much I'm standing right here.

Blaine notices. "Leave room for Jesus!" He calls jokingly from the stage. Brittany pulls away laughing as Lips jogs up to the stage and good-naturedly punches a grinning Blaine in the shoulder.

"Come on." Brittany laughs, hooking her left arm into my right and leading us over to stand in front of the sound booth. Just a few seconds later I see Quinn walk in and hook her arm into Brittany's, Nee and Kristen appearing moments later to hook into Quinn's. The chain continues until basically the entire varsity team is linked together. Nobody hooked into my left arm. I scowl and I can't help but think about what Puck said last night about everyone here thinking I'm a bitch.

And then everybody starts singing this god-awful Christian music along with Blaine and everyone on stage and I'm sorry but I fucking refuse to do this. People are really getting into it, too. Some random boy even stormed up to the front and knelt in front of the stage for Jesus or something like he'd had some kind of mental breakdown.

_What the hell am I even doing here._

After watching thirteen-year-old kids raising their hands to high heavens as if they're actually feeling something spiritual – give me a fucking break – we're finally allowed to sit down. I sigh in relief. When we're settled Brittany nudges me and leans over to whisper something to me, probably to ask why I wasn't singing.

"Youuu should spend the night with me tonight."

Or not.

I whisper back, a little flustered. "I don't have any overnight stuff with me. Or clothes, or anything."

"I already told you," she grins at me, "that I'd totally let you sweat in my clothes. You can use whatever you need."

"Yeah, but we have an away game tomorrow morning and I don't have my jersey or warm-ups with me?" I point out.

"Oh." She pauses then scrunches up her nose cutely. "Well we could get someone in your dorm that's on the team to bring it to you in the morning?"

"Yeah, but no one else in Palm is on the volleyball team. Preppy girly girl dorm, remember?"

She scrunches her nose up again. "Huh?"

I wave her off. "Nothing, sorry, I forgot you weren't there for that conversation."

"Oh. Quinn could do it?" She suggests. I notice Quinn's head whip around at the sound of her name.

"I could do what?"

I ignore Quinn, "I just don't really want anyone else going through my room, I mean–"

"Hey, if you don't want to, that's totally okay." Britt interrupts, looking a little disappointed. "I mean we've only known each other for like a week, so I'd totally get it and everything. And it is kind of last-minute, I just thought it would be kind of fun to –"

"Britt." I put my hand on her knee to stop her. "I was about to say we could just walk to Palm and get my stuff during lunch and then get brötchen during study hall."

Her eyes light up. "That sounds awesome."

* * *

"Forget your lunch?" The Palm dorm mom says boredly as she's reading on one of the lounge chairs, as if this is something that happens all the time.

"Britt invited me over to Storch for the night so I came to get some stuff. I'll be back after tomorrow's away game."

"Sounds good, thanks for letting me know."

"Uh-huh."

"Nice to see you, Linda." Brittany waves with a bright smile.

"You too, Brittany." She looks up from her book and smiles back warmly.

We turn a corner and make our way into my room. "You know," Brittany says, "You're really lucky you have cool dorm parents. The dorm parents at like Witt or Blauen would have completely freaked on you if you'd told them you were going to spend the night somewhere without asking a few days ahead."

"Well I guess it's a damn good thing I'm lucky because I'd be a pain in their ass otherwise."

Brittany laughs. "Yeah, probably. I like your room, by the way."

"Thanks. It's kind of messy." I say, cringing as I look around my room. My clothes are all over the place; I haven't even done laundry yet since I've been here. I'm used to my mom doing it for me, okay? I'm a teenager. The first thing I do is grab my passport from my desk drawer and put it in the smallest pocket of my duffel bag. Passports are essential numero uno, apparently. Nee's exact words, not mine. After that I pack all my volleyball game day gear, then look for what I'd need for a sleepover. I step into my bathroom to grab my shampoo and razor and stuff, but Brittany calls in to stop me.

"You can use my bathroom stuff, Santana. Seriously, you don't need to pack that."

Is it normal for people to share razors? I shrug and walk back into the room. Whatevs.

I throw in a pair of socks and I'm attempting to find pajama bottoms or even just shorts that don't have volleyball sweat on themas Britt jumps onto my bed.

"Man, your beds are so much more comfortable. Next time let's stay the night here." I don't really respond even though _next time_ sticks out to me because I'm digging in my closet for something, _anything_. And where the fuck is all my clean underwear? I swear to god I still had like a week's worth of pairs. "What are you looking for?" Britt cranes her head with a furrowed brow. "Santana, seriously you can borrow whatever you need from me I really don't care. I actually kind of like seeing other people wear my clothes. It's fun."

"Okay." I sigh. "I'm just gonna find a clean pair of undies then I'm ready."

"You can borrow a pair of mine." I look back at her skeptically because that seems weird. "Seriously oh my gosh Santana it's fine, they're clean, now let's go get brötchen."

I'm pretty sure it's not normal to share underwear.

"Okay," I say, pulling my sports bag around my shoulder. "Ready."

We walk back to the school with my stuff – Britt sweetly offers to carry the bag; I tell her it's fine – and make it just in time to sign out for study hall and make a trip to Hiebers for lunch.

"Okay, for just bread and cheese," I say, munching on my first bite of brötchen spread with cream cheese. "This is pretty damn good."

"Right?" Brittany says as she pulls one of her rolls out of the paper bag from the Hieber's bakery. "I told you, you're never going to eat American bread ever again."

"I think you're probably right." I nod.

"Are you excited about tomorrow?" Brittany asks, tearing off a piece of poppy seed covered bread with her teeth.

I swallow. "I'm kind of nervous." I say, then pause because I'm a little surprised that I just said I was _nervous_ about something.

"How come?" Britt asks, brow furrowed, mouth full.

"I've never played volleyball before, so what if I suck? I really don't want to suck." I admit.

"You're not going to suck." Britt reassures before she swallows her bite. "You'll be fine."

"Yeah?" I say.

"Yeah, and I'm not even saying that to make you feel better, it's just the truth. I've been watching you play volleyball for the last week. You're a natural." She shrugs and takes another bite of her roll.

I smile at her in actual genuine thanks before I sigh. "Okay, but what if the pressure gets to me, and I just completely lose my shit?"

"You won't." She laughs. "Seriously, you'll be awesome. And we'll all be there to make sure you don't lose your shit, okay?" She pats my back definitively. "We gotcha."

I shake my head at her, grinning. "Alright."

After study hall I find myself mostly thinking about tonight. I told Britt I was nervous about the game tomorrow, but if I'm honest, I might actually be a little more nervous about spending the night at Storch with her. I don't even know, okay? I can't even think of the last time I had a sleepover with someone I actually _liked _being around.

Practice is actually easy and we just spend the two hours lightly scrimmaging to try and get the stupidly complicated rotation down. I wipe the thankfully minimal perspiration from my forehead as we all exit the gym. Nee skips up next to me at the bottom of the stairs while we head toward the locker room

"Are you ready for tomorrow?"

I look at her dubiously. "I don't know, am I ready for tomorrow?"

She looks me up and down. "I think you're ready for tomorrow." She says appreciatively, nodding.

"Then I guess I'm ready for tomorrow." I shrug.

"Good woman." She slaps my butt suddenly and my eyes widen and back straightens in surprise. I narrow my eyes at her as she jogs past me. "You'll be fine!"

"Yeah, Santana." I hear Brittany behind me and – damn it she slaps my ass too and I tense up again. "You're gonna be awesome!"

I scowl at Britt and Nee's backs. "Yeah, okay, can we not–"

Quinn wordlessly slaps my butt as she spins past me, throwing a grin over her shoulder.

"Very cute, Fabray." I roll my eyes and I'm about to reach the door when I feel another hand smack my butt, and Kristen slips in front of me through the doorway, sticking out her tongue and forming a 'rock on' hand gesture.

"Goddamn it, guys."

Britt and I get our stuff together then go outside to wait on the bench for the dinner vans. The Storch van is the last to arrive, pulling dangerously fast into the lot, its presence announced by loud pop music blaring through the open windows. The woman who jumps out of it has long blonde hair and confidence in her step.

"Hola chicas!" She greets Britt, Nee, two girls I don't know and I as we walk up to the van to put our bags in the back. She turns to me. "Hi, I'm Holly, Storch RA." She sticks her hand out to me and I shake it. "Whose are you?"

I wrinkle my nose. "Huh?"

"She's mine." Britt responds next to me as she tosses her backpack on top of the pile. (My stomach somersaults weirdly at being referred to as 'hers.')

Holly's face lights in recognition. "Oh, you're Santana! Nice to see ya, girl."

"Uh, yeah, you too?" I chuckle, looking at Britt.

"I was telling her about you the other night." Britt explains with a little smile.

"Yeah, she wouldn't shut up about you." Holly teases, rolling her eyes.

"Holly!" Britt laughs, whacking the woman's arm. I know it was just a joke (but my stomach does that thing again regardless).

Once the food is loaded Britt calls out "Shotgun!" and grabs my arm, dragging me a little too excitedly into the two front passenger seats with her.

"Ready chicas?" Holly calls out when everyone is in the van. Britt nods emphatically in response and cranks up the radio volume as far as it will go. The song happens to be something by Nicki Minaj so, you know. Shoot me. Still, Brittany's energy is completely infectious and somehow she gets me to dance in my seat along with her to the rest of the song. Holly is making me a little nervous with how fast she's going on the winding narrow road through the forest when the song ends and a new one begins.

I recognize the beginning notes of 'My Heart Will Go On' and turn to Brittany, yelling over the loud volume.

"You have to be shitting me."

She sees the look on my face and just laughs at me. "Yeah, German radio can be a little weird sometimes. You get used to it."

"Yeah?" I laugh back. "How many things am I getting used to now?" I start counting on my fingers jokingly. "Four, five, six, seven–"

Britt interrupts, "I don't know, but _eeevery night in my dreams,_" She dramatically outstretches her hand to Holly, who starts singing as well, _"I see you," _she turns towards me and awkwardly attaches her hand to my face, _"I feeeeeeel you." _I laugh and swat her hand away. "_Thaaat is how I know you," _I hear Nee and the other girls join in in the back, _"go on."_

They continue singing the verses, making ridiculous gestures for each lyric and occasionally playing air instruments. I just keep laughing and shaking my head at their weird antics. Eventually I can't resist joining in by the time the second chorus comes around. I turn theatrically to Brittany with a wide-eyed expression. _"Neaaaaaaaar," _Britt's smile broadens exponentially, _"faaaaaaaaar," _she points to the landscape outside, _"whereeeeever you aaaaare, I belieeeeve that the heart does,"_ everyone clutches their chest, _"go ooonnnnnn." _Holly drums the steering wheel with her fingers. _"Oooooooonce moooooore, you ooooopen the door," _everybody opens an imaginary door, then clutches their chest again, _"and you're heeeeere in my heart aaand my heart wiiiill go onnn aaand oooon."_

Immediately Britt starts playing the air flute, dramatically twisting her head around to the rhythm. I wave my hand above my head like a sassy black woman as Britt urgently grabs my wrist and closes it into a fist as a makeshift microphone and I take a deep breath to sing –

"_YOUUUUUUU'RE HEEEEEEEEERE." _Brittany grabs my shoulder with her free hand and sings at me, "_THERE'S NOOOOOOTHING TO FEAR, AND I KNOOOOOW THAT MY HEART WIIIILL GO OOOONNNNNNNN," _Suddenly she pulls my body to hers in a tight hug, closing her eyes and clutching my heart urgently, _"WEEEEEE'LL STAAAAAAAAY FOREEEEEEVER THIS-"_

The van shuts off, pulling to an abrupt stop, and I clutch Britt a little tighter as the force suddenly throws everyone slightly forward.

Holly jumps out as Nee whines from the back, "Man, Holly, you threw off our groove."

Holly slides the side door open and pokes her head in. "I be starving, girl." She defends. "Come on, let's go eat. We can rock out to Celine some other time."

Britt smiles at me as we let go of each other and hop out of the van.

Dinnertime at Storch is a little different from dinnertime at Palm. At Palm, we quietly sit down, Linda or Dan prays over the meal, and we eat. Pretty simple. Here at Storch, the people in the dining room start banging the tables with their fists and won't stop until all the girls are in the room. Cheers erupt in the dining room once everyone's here and then they all quiet down, god, finally. I may not be hungover anymore but seriously the noise is so fucking unnecessary.

The dorm mom who stands up is the same jittery redhead that called out countries at the opening ceremony. Her eyes really are huge – she's like a goddamn bush baby.

Anyways, she stands up and claps her hands together to get everyone's attention, then we play the obligatory 'who doesn't belong here' game of which I'm almost always the star player. Everyone claps and Nee even whistles when Brittany introduces me as her guest.

"You know," Britt says next to me as we dish up our food. "You're a really good singer."

Obviously I already knew this but it's actually nice to hear it from Brittany. "Thanks." I say.

"We should do a duet or something for choir. We could do a Ke$ha song and I'll do the rap parts and you do the singing parts."

I laugh. "Nice try, but still not a fan of Ke$ha."

"Yeah, but we're getting there." She grins back at me.

During dinnertime a few of the girls ask me questions about where I'm from and where my parents work and all of that. Normally I'd be frank and kind of callous about it, but having Britt sit next to me, watching my conversations and occasionally interjecting, actually makes me, well, nice.

Oh my god, what's happening to me.

When people start leaving the table, Britt and I stack our dishes by the giant sink and head up the ridiculously steep stairs with our bags. I can't help but notice how old the building must be. Each wooden step creaks loudly and some give to my weight enough to make me nervous about the whole damn staircase collapsing. I stop behind Britt when I notice that just outside the doorway to the third and final floor is a slightly rusted green sign that says 'CLOTHING OPTIONAL BEYOND THIS POINT.'

"Where did you even get that?" I laugh, pointing to the sign. Brittany stops as well and takes a step back to see what I'm talking about.

"Oh my gosh that's been here for years. One of the girls from several years ago stole it from a California beach I think."

"That's awesome." I say. _And appropriate,_ I think, as literally two seconds later some girl that I've never even seen before walks down the third floor hallway in nothing but a towel wrapped around her head.

Brittany's room is at the right side of the end of the hallway, next to an indoor fire escape. A good part of her room is just an angled ceiling, which kind of makes me feel claustrophobic when I walk in. It's homey, though. I drop my bag next to Britt's and walk through the space. All the decorations are a little mismatched and haphazard, but colorful. She's stuck a collage of somewhere around a hundred printed photos on the angled ceiling above her twin bed.

I hear Britt start to talk behind me. "Clothes are in the dresser, feel free to go through it and grab whatever you want to change into." I'm turning back to face her when I'm met with the now almost familiar sight of her bare boobs.

"Jesus." I say, snapping my eyes shut. "Can you at least warn me before you get naked?"

"Just trying to break you in." Brittany jokes. "You want to shower, right?"

"Um, sure." I say. I hesitate for a moment, fidgeting awkwardly before I start stripping down as well.

When we're both undressed – no, I'm still not used to this, and I actively try to avoid looking at her (unsuccessfully) – she hands me a Disney Princess beach towel which I wrap around my body, thank you very much. She then grabs her own slightly tattered orange one off the back of her door and hands me an armful of shower crap.

"I'll be there in a sec. Bathroom's second to the end of the hall on the right." She says. As I walk in that direction I hear Brittany call down the stairs behind me, "NEE, DO YOU STILL HAVE MY CONDITIONER?" I look down at the shower stuff and sure enough, no conditioner.

For how goddamn old this building is, I'm surprised that the bathroom is actually pretty nice and clean. There are two shower stalls and two toilet stalls across from each other, the door of one of which I hang my towel over. I set Brittany's shower crap sans the shampoo on the floor in front of the stalls, step into the one on the right, and close the thankfully _not_ completely transparent swinging glass door behind me. I'm not surprised to see that the shower doors don't have locks.

I've just started lathering the shampoo into my hair when I hear Britt walk into the bathroom. See, because there are two showers, I just assumed that I would take one and Brittany would take the other. That's why I set her stuff outside the stall, so we could both access it. Any ordinary person would assume that.

The thing I forgot, though, is that Brittany is _not_ just some ordinary person, and she operates on a completely different set of rules. So when I hear the squeak of the glass door of _my _stall opening, I feel that familiar simultaneous leap and drop of my stomach.

My eyes are closed tight, so I jolt when I feel her (naked) skin brush past my (naked) outer thigh to reach the shampoo I set on the floor. (We're both so, _so_ naked.)

"Sorry." She says. She's so fucking close to me right now that I can feel her body heat. Showering in this stall with someone is even worse than showering in the locker room stalls with someone because the door closes, leaving us with no choice but to share the space, rather than one of us standing just outside while the other uses the water. I hear the crack of her shampoo bottle opening, so I quickly rinse out my hair and then flatten myself against the glass, scooting past her so she can get to the stream of water. I keep my eyes closed as I do this, which is a huge mistake because I can't see that Brittany brought all the rest of her crap in with her and dumped it on the shower floor. Specifically, there's a hard plastic razor sitting face down on the polished, slippery white acrylic. And my heel lands on it.

"FUCK-" I shriek as I slip on the razor and fall backwards against the door, which opens violently as my head hits it. I hear Brittany yelp in surprise and I feel her tumbling down with me, having had her feet knocked out from under her. What happens is my back falls onto the acrylic edge of the shower_, fucking ouch,_ half of my body in and half out, water dripping onto the bathroom floor, and Brittany falls face forward, half on top of me. Yes, that's right. Bare-ass naked.

"Oh my gosh, are you okay?" She says from above me.

"Auuughh." I prop myself up on my elbows outside the open door of the stall, wincing at my back and gingerly touching the back of my head that hit the door to make sure it's not like bleeding or anything. I look up at Brittany (which I fucking just shouldn't have done) and she's staring back at me with concern in her eyes, water glistening on the side of her face, accentuating her high cheekbones. Her wet blonde hair is tousled over and stuck to parts of her face and neck, her blue eyes wide and pink lips slightly parted.

(This is an incredibly inopportune time for me to be struck by how attractive she is.)

She's propped her body up with her hands so she's not _completely _flush against me, but I can definitely feel her pelvis brushing dangerously against my inner thigh. (Oh my god. My heart is pounding. I feel like I'm suffocating.)

And then we're doing this thing that we do sometimes where we maintain eye contact for just a _little _too long, and it's totally the worst time for it. I think Brittany realizes this so she averts her eyes and pushes herself off of me, grabbing my hand and helping me up with her. And for the first time since I've known her, she actually looks uncomfortable. Internally I'm freaking out, but at the same time I'm kind of amused because literally it takes being naked and on top of another naked person for Brittany to finally feel awkward about personal space.

I'm still tense and I feel like my entire body is burning when I notice the slight pink painted on Brittany's own face. "You good?" She says, avoiding my eyes still, rubbing her tinted cheeks and ears with the back of her hand.

"Yeah." I croak. She nods and steps back into the still-running shower, leaving the door open for me to enter after her. I hesitate before I make the decision to push the stall door closed, leaving Brittany inside. Thankfully I got all of the shampoo out of my hair, so it doesn't just look like I'm bailing because what just happened kind of freaked me out (which it did). So I grab my towel – again wrapping it around my body thank you very much – and go back to Brittany's room, closing the door behind me.

I rustle through her dresser and put on a plain pair of black panties that I find in her otherwise very colorful underwear drawer. I'm still not sure how I feel about the sharing underwear thing, plus they're a little loose because I have the hips of a fucking twelve-year-old boy. I put on the bra I wore to school and pick a pair of yellow cotton shorts and an old, slightly tattered 'Beauty and the Beast' shirt, throwing my back onto Brittany's bed once I'm dressed. I turn my head to look over at her nightstand and notice a worn wooden picture frame, which I pick up without thinking. The photo inside is a little blurry and there's a crease in the middle, but I can't help the small smile that tugs at my lips as I look at it. There are two people in the picture – a young girl, maybe six or seven, with blonde pigtails and gaps in her huge smile, laughing as she's being tickled in the lap of a beautiful blonde-haired woman. I recognize that radiant smile and sparkling eyes on both their faces and know that it's a picture of Britt and her mom. I hear footsteps approaching the room, so I quickly set the frame on the nightstand and lie back onto the bed, throwing an arm over my eyes.

I hear the door open. "What do you wanna do now?" She asks as I hear her rustling through her drawers.

"Well, what are the options?" I say with my arm still slung over my eyes.

"We could go on a walk, we could fool around up here. Or they're probably watching a movie downstairs since it's Friday."

The phrase 'fool around' sticks out to me. I take it differently than I'm sure she meant it, and my face warms slightly. God, I need to get my shit together. I feel Brittany's bed sink under the weight of her sitting at the edge. I assume then that she's dressed and pull my arm off of my eyes, looking at her. She is.

"So?" She prompts.

"Let's check out what they're watching downstairs." I say.

When we get downstairs, half the dorm is gathered in the living area around this super ghetto-ass 90's TV. One of the girls just put a disc into the player.

I lean over to whisper to Brittany, "Your TV fucking sucks."

She gives me a look as if she's offended on behalf of the shitty TV, then nods, knowing I'm totally right.

"Yeah. We're the only dorm that doesn't have a nice flat screen." She steps closer into the living area. "Hey, what are we watching?" She asks loudly.

"Hunger Games." Someone calls out.

"Oh dude!" Brittany's face lights up as she turns to me. "I still haven't seen it." Really? "Have you seen it?"

I nod. "Yeah."

"Oh." Her face falls just slightly. "Well we can do something else –"

"Britt." I interrupt. "I can watch it again. It's a good movie."

She gives me an affectionate smile that makes my stomach flutter before grabbing my hand and dragging me to an unoccupied loveseat in the corner of the room. Because I've already seen the movie, I end up paying more attention to Brittany out of the corner of my eye as she watches it rather than actually watching it myself. She's completely enthralled by everything that's happening onscreen. Around when they're going into the games, she switches from hugging her legs to her chest, resting her chin on her knees to swinging her legs over the arm of the loveseat and using my lap as a pillow. She looks up at me and smiles, her bright blue eyes ever sparkling.

(My heart pounds in my chest. I wonder if she can hear it.)

Everything that happens in the movie is mirrored in Britt's expressions. During the scene where Rue dies, her brows are creased and her hand is pressed over her mouth, open in shock. She wears a wide grin when Katniss finds Peeta camouflaged in the rocks, and a shy smile when they kiss in the cave. She starts biting her nails during the final fight with Cato and suddenly clutches my shoulder when she thinks that Katniss and Peeta will have to fight to the death.

When the credits roll, she looks back up at me, delighted. "Oh my gosh it was sooo good!"

I look down at her, chuckling. By now it's past ten, which isn't late at all but with how much shit goes on all week at this school, I'm actually pretty damn tired.

Britt seems to read my mind. "Bed?"

I nod, yawning. "Yeah."

We head back upstairs and into Britt's room, and I realize as soon as she picks up her facewash, toothbrush and toothpaste that I didn't bother with bringing any of those things. The main concern being the toothbrush.

"Fucking damn it." I sigh as she's about to go to the bathroom.

"What? What is it?" She looks at me with concern.

"I didn't bring a toothbrush." I say, gesturing to the items in her hand.

"Oh, oops. Sorry, didn't think about that."

"Do you think there's any spares around?"

"Probably not." She shrugs, turning back to the door. "You can just use mine, though. I don't care."

I can't help the slight grimace that appears on my face as she leaves the room. The idea of sharing a toothbrush with someone is so totally not something I would _ever_ consider doing. I mean, gross, right? Married couples don't even do that. And yet I'm following her to the bathroom.

She hands me her freshly rinsed toothbrush after she's done with it and starts washing her face. I should find this totally disgusting, but I don't. I let myself think for a second about how if it were literally _anyone else_, it totally would be disgusting.

I just shrug, squeezing the toothpaste onto the brush, and do my normal toothbrushing routine.

Britt is setting her alarm while I crawl into her twin size bed. I'm realizing as I scoot to the wall that this is really not very much room at all for two people. I definitely realize it when Brittany slides into the blankets next to me, leaving pretty much no space between us. She reaches over to turn off the lamp and I feel myself tense up a little bit when she settles into the bed, facing me, unavoidably brushing our limbs together.

I'd kind of expected us to talk a little before falling asleep – you do that at sleepovers, right? So I'm slightly disappointed when Brittany just yawns and says definitively, "'Night Santana."

"Goodnight Britt." I say quietly.

"Mmm, I like it when you call me Britt." She sighs.

I open my mouth a couple times, intending to respond, but I don't really know what to say. So I just smile a little, unseen. It only takes a few minutes for Britt's breathing to even out. I turn onto my side, facing away from her and I listen to her steady breaths before eventually I fall asleep as well.

Somewhere in the night I vaguely remember feeling a lithe arm snake itself around my waist, its warm hand sliding across my abdomen, balling into a fist as fingers grasp the fabric of my shirt. I remember a warm face and soft lips pressing themselves into the crook of my shoulder - my t-shirt absorbing hot, steady breaths, trickling into my skin and sending chills down my spine. I also vaguely remember clutching that arm and pulling its body flush against my back, sighing deeply. But it might've been a dream.

…

**AN:** Um yeah idk happy Monday everyone stay alive that's all. Reviews are love. Brittana are meant for each other.


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